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And there was no reason he should. With detainees numbering in the hundreds every day, the baggage room was a busy, crowded place. I would not wish anything I valued to be stowed there for longer than a day.
    His compounded loss proved too much for me. Andrew’s homeland was far behind him, his wife was dead, and he was about to enter the scarlet fever ward for who knew how long. All that was left to him now were his grief and his trunk. He was in an in-between place like me, but his was much worse. I knew that if I asked for permission to get the pattern book out of Andrew Gwynn’s trunk, I would not be granted it. A sick man didn’t need sewing patterns. And a well man would have them back in his possession within the week. But I also knew that I would have to try.
    “I can’t bring the trunk to you, Mr. Gwynn. No one will allow it. But I will try to get the pattern book for you. I will need your trunk’s claim ticket. And is there a key?”
    A measure of his dread lifted and he reached into his coat pocket and drew out a folded card with the claim numbers for his and his wife’s luggage. He also handed me a looped shoelace with two keys dangling from it. “It is wrapped in canvas. On top.”
    I took the key and card from him and slipped them into my apron.
    “Thank you, Miss Wood,” he murmured, and I saw the hint of a grateful smile.
    “I can only try, Mr. Gwynn. I may return to you with nothing but your keys and card.”
    He nodded and the thick layer of dazed astonishment returned, as though he might at any minute wake from a dream, for surely none of this was real.
    I wondered whether he had family already in America who were waiting for him. “Do you need me to contact someone for you? Is anyone expecting you onshore?” I asked.
    “My brother, Nigel, and his wife. In New York. Greenwich Village.”
    “Would you like me to send word to them that . . . where you are?”
    “I sent a telegram this morning. From the ship.” He looked off toward the harbor behind us.
    “That’s good.” I didn’t know what to say next. Andrew made no move to turn from me and enter the building. He seemed to be lost in a new thought.
    “He won’t believe me.”
    “Pardon?”
    He turned back to face me, surprised, it seemed, that I had heard him. “I’d only been married a week. And I had only known Lily for twelve days before we married.” He shook his head and looked off in the distance. “Nigel will think I’m a fool,” he said to the teasing August wind.
    A vision of Edward handing me my umbrella filled my mind, and the scent of macaroons and Earl Grey tea crowded in around me. I knew how fast the heart could learn to love someone. A jab of sorrow poked me and I flinched.
    “I don’t think you’re a fool,” I said.
    The scarf billowed up between us, soft and eager to fly. I caught a whiff of fragrance in its threads, delicate and sweet. In the sunlight it looked less like fire and more like a burst of monarch butterflies. I could see a cascading fall of marigolds splashed across the fabric.
    Andrew caught the twin tails and smoothed them down over his chest.
    If Mrs. Crowley knew the scarf had belonged to Andrew Gwynn’s dead wife, she would have likely insisted it be taken from him to be incinerated.
    Andrew seemed to notice I was staring at the scarf and putting the obvious together in my head. He looked down at it, and then tucked it quickly into his coat.
    “Thank you for your help, Miss Wood,” he said.
    Then he opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it behind him.

Four
    MY father said I was good at nursing because I didn’t panic. Mama and Henrietta could sweep the floors of my father’s practice and roll bandages and take medicine to those who couldn’t get to town, but neither of them could help my father in the surgery like I could. I think it surprised him when I didn’t head to nursing school the moment I finished high school. I was in no hurry to learn officially what I already