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dam of his composed face holding back his irritation at being disputed. After a pause, he bowed lightly. “You’re right as always, Mrs. O’Doyle. As Dr. Westbrook says, the important thing is to keep Rose calm. And happy. There’s no rush—that is to say, we mustn’t rush the process.”
    â€œWell.” The doctor tucked his notebook in his pocket and then patted my mother on the arm. “You are a good role model for her now. By withdrawing from the world”—Dr. Westbrook had begun packing as if onstage in front of his audience, and I shifted to relieve my weary lower back—“she has retreated back to her infancy, returning to seed, as it were. Let us nurture her; let us give her the peace she needs to sleep through this winter of the soul. When she is ready, she will reemerge and blossom in her full womanhood.”
    Ma nodded, and finding me in the corner, indicated I should follow her out. We descended silently, step by step, back to the servants’ quarters, and when we reached Ma’s office, really the former housekeeper’s sitting room, Ma closed the door behind us and sank into a chair.
    â€œGee, is she always so-—”
    My mother just held up a hand to stop me. “What did you do?”
    â€œI didn’t do anything. Probably what happened was—”
    â€œPlease, no lies this time. What did you do?”
    I looked down at my hands, which twisted my apron into knots. “I forgot the sugar,” I mumbled.
    And with this, my mother dropped her head into her hands. I noticed for the first time traces of gray shot through her hair.
    â€œI’m sorry, Ma! It won’t happen again! I’ll make sure . . .”
    When she looked up again, her eyes were red. “She’s a shadow of the girl I first knew. Once she was resilient, unstoppable, a force of nature, that’s what she was! And now the least change in routine sends her into a tizzy. All the strength and life drained out of her, or worse, distorted in these bizarre outbursts! And whatever we do—the sleep therapy, the restraints, the baths—she just fades more and more into the shadows.” She wiped roughly at her eyes with her handkerchief. “Mr. Sewell says we should stay the course, listen to the doctor, but I’m starting to believe we won’t ever get her back.”
    Ma indulged her sorrow a few moments more,then blew her nose and tucked her handkerchief away. As she rose to splash her face with water from the washbasin, she said, “Go home, just go home. Tomorrow you’ll work upstairs, as a parlor maid. I can’t chance any more changes to Miss Rose’s diet or routine.”
    â€”
    I ascended out of the basement to a glorious autumn day in New York, the sun shining and a free day ahead of me.
    So why did I still feel such subterranean misery?
    Because my carelessness had gotten me in trouble—again.
    Because I’d caused Ma such grief—again.
    And that grief wasn’t even for me.

Chapter
5
    D espite my free pass to play hooky, something more attractive beckoned me: sleep. It had been weeks of up at dawn, an hour on the train, on my feet for ten, sometimes twelve hours, followed by another hour on the train, and practically collapsing on our house’s stoop. I understood now Ma’s “weekly holidays,” her two hours every Sunday afternoon, napping and reading in bed while I kept the twins out of her hair.
    I dozed the whole train ride home, dreaming of a proper kip on the sofa and an after-school runaround with the twins. But the door was open and lights on when I got home. Which meant no afternoon nap. It meant something much better.
    Daddo was home.
    Daddo was what everyone in the neighborhood called him, short for Daddy O’Doyle, from when I was a wee thing and he’d show me off at the saloon. When Ma thought he was perambulating me around the park, he’d roll me instead into