“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Lizzie asked, tucking the bottle back into her skirt pocket. “Mother gave it to me when I came here.”

Grace’s eyes left her own newspaper, watching her friend as she scanned hers. She touched Lizzie’s knee hesitantly.

“I don’t mind talking about it,” Elizabeth said, looking up. “My mother didn’t want to give me up, but Father insisted. Put all the blame on Mother’s side of the family, which I suppose is true enough. Mother’s mother had String, you see. I could always see it. Mother said I loved Grandma the most, even as an infant. I always wanted to sit in her lap and I’d swipe at String, trying to catch it.

“Grandma knew that Father wouldn’t approve, so she never said a word about String in his hearing. When Mother was heavy pregnant with her second, String told Grandma that it would be born dead, with the cord about its neck. She ran over to our house, barefoot and in her nightgown, to try and save it, but it was too late. I saw my baby brother, face black as coal, and Grandma talking about String so loud she’d woke me.

“Father wouldn’t have any of it, though Mother tried to tell him it was harmless. He called it witchcraft and threw Grandma out the front door. I remember he shoved her so hard her head bounced up off the rocks and String went flying. Mother was wailing and Father was screaming and the midwife was trying to keep everyone from killing one another. I put my little hand up on the window and Grandma just got up, real slow, smiled back at me, and hobbled home. I woke up in the morning with String on my shoulder and a voice in my head saying Grandma was gone. I marched downstairs and said so, and Father never looked at me the same after that.”

Grace’s fingers hovered on the obituaries, her eyes still on Lizzie, who tossed her old newspaper for a new one without breaking stride in her story.

“Father kept to himself on the subject until Mother was pregnant again and he didn’t want me near her. She cried and cried but couldn’t convince him there wasn’t any harm in String. For the sake of peace she took me to the train station one day, handed me a ticket and this bottle of perfume so I could smell it and remember she loved me. Tears were streaming down her face but she let me go, my own face dry as a sunny day because String had told me all along I was meant for something different.

“If I’d known this is what String had in mind, I might’ve put up more of an argument,” Lizzie said, holding a wet paper away from her at arm’s length, nose wrinkled.

Grace laughed, reaching out to squeeze her friend’s hand.

“I’m fine,” Lizzie said, smiling back. “I have no shame in String. I’d rather live where String can be String and I can be me without having to pretend I’m something else.”

The returned squeeze on Grace’s hand was almost too much to bear as she looked back to her newspaper, the ink twice blurred by smears and the tears standing in her eyes.

Grace knew death. Knew it well from following in its footsteps only minutes after they’d been made. She had learned how to trace its passage backward from knife wounds and bullet exits to the thought that had conceived of the act and in whose mind it had occurred. Death’s less brutal faces were unfamiliar to her, but she learned their names in the stall, their portraits spelled out in blurry letters reeking of fish scales.

Tuberculosis. Dysentery. Cholera. Malaria. Typhoid. Pneumonia. Diphtheria. Scarlet fever. Brain fever. Whooping cough.

In her room that night she rubbed her eyes to free them from the words that still seemed to dance on the backs of her eyelids, the names of the remaining family members listed as if to stand in defiance of death, proof that their blood would continue. But none of them had the prefix Dr. attached to them, and Grace had returned to her room without informing Thornhollow of her failure.

Grace stretched under her bedcovers, her eyes returning to Alice’s letter on the bedstand, her heart lurching. She’d been unable to find the words to respond; the only thing she burned to write was to tell Alice to get out, to run away and never return home. But that message would never be delivered, Grace knew. Falsteed wouldn’t allow her to advise Alice onto a path that could deliver her into another breed of harm, or bring it home to roost on Grace’s doorstep if she declared herself the author.

With blurred newspaper print still dancing in her eyes, Grace tossed and turned, the smell of rosewater following her down to sleep.

Plaster trickled onto her face along with the first rays of the sun. Grace pulled away from the wall as Joanna pounded on the other side, her leather mitts dulling her impact but reinforcing her determination. Grace sighed and sat up, her hands going to her scars for reassurance and bringing the lingering scent of Lizzie’s mother’s perfume with them. Her eyes still ached from deciphering columns of newsprint the day before. Her heart was heavy with futility, and Alice’s fate hung like a sword above her head. For the first time, the walls that held her felt less like safety and more like imprisonment, binding her to an existence where she could witness suffering but do nothing to help.

The rosewater stayed with her as she pulled her hair up, glancing into the cloudy mirror as she did, her town dress reflected alongside her own face. Without thinking, she pulled curls down to cover her scars, pinning them in place along with the matching hat. The dress followed, and Grace surveyed herself in the mirror, every inch a normal girl with no cares in the world, her surroundings screaming out the opposite.

She snuck into Elizabeth’s room, tiptoeing in her boots so as not to wake the other girl. Grace riffled through Elizabeth’s dresser until she found the little bottle of perfume, carefully easing Lizzie’s door shut behind her when she left. Joanna’s constant thumping covered Grace’s footsteps as she slipped down the stairs and out the door long before the rest of the asylum was awake.

Fresh flakes of snow fell on her as she crossed the grounds, catching in her hair and filling the footprints she left behind her. With Nell on her mind and Elizabeth’s bottle in her pocket, Grace followed the path the Irish girl had shown her down to the frozen river. She crossed easily, the ice firm beneath her feet, and soon she was on the edge of town, the sun waking up the residents and shops just opening their doors.

Grace shook the snow from her shoulders and walked through the streets, nodding greetings to those she met while her eyes roamed the storefronts for what she needed. She found a chemist’s shop on Hudson Street, the midmorning sun lighting up the colored bottles in the window and drawing her to them.

She opened the door, a bell dinging overhead as she did so. The man behind the counter was in conversation with another customer, so Grace browsed the shelves. Colored bottles in various sizes lined the walls, their labels promising cures for everything from chicken pox to dandruff. A table set with everything a fine lady would need for her toilet caught Grace’s eye, and she made her way to it. She removed the stoppers from the perfumes to take experimental sniffs.

None quite matched Elizabeth’s scent, their much heavier tones almost overpowering Grace. She put the stopper back on one, barely restraining a sneeze when she noticed a small, hand-lettered sign on the table.

Custom Fragrance Matching Available

Inquire With Chemist

Grace’s fingers tightened on Elizabeth’s bottle as she waited for the man ahead of her to finish his business. His voice carried as he turned to leave. “We’re glad to have you back in regular business, Beaton. The wife swears by your glycerins, says she won’t put anything else on the baby’s bum. Begging your pardon, ma’am.” He tipped his hat to Grace. She nodded in return as the bell dinged over his departure and approached the counter.