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you? All you could think about was your own obsession,” Isabelle replied. Clara jabbed her sharply in the ribs.
    “Jo practically never gets sick, so it’s hardly surprising. I, on the other hand, found out the very day . . .” Clara said, a tragicomic look on her face.
    “He was a regular visitor to your place until the very end, wasn’t he? Your mother would have just loved for you to marry old Fritsche. Then she would have had a doctor in the house for every little cough and cold you caught. Remember how we all used to joke around about that? Those were the days . . .” Isabelle looked at her two friends and smiled.
    “Joke around? You two teased me mercilessly!” Clara replied in mock outrage.
    The three young women laughed, and for a moment their old familiarity returned.
    “Here. This is for you,” said Clara and handed Josephine the block of chocolate.
    If Adele sees that . . . thought Josephine. “Thank you. But I insist on sharing it with the two of you,” she said firmly. Her hands ached as she set to work unwrapping it.
    “Ever since Dr. Fritsche died, everyone’s been coming to my father as a substitute,” said Clara as she popped a square of chocolate into her mouth. “He’s asked me to help him meet the extra demand by making the medicines, even if it means I have to stay up late in the laboratory every night.”
    Josephine looked fondly at her friend. “Don’t go pretending you don’t enjoy it. There’s nothing you like more than stirring up some potion or other.”
    “Or crushing herbs with a mortar and pestle,” Isabelle added.
    Clara smiled. “You’ve caught me!”
    As the banter flew back and forth, Josephine felt a pang of admiration for her friend. Ever since Clara first helped her father boil soap years before, it had been clear that she would someday go to work in his pharmacy. Her mother, however—who considered such work to be beneath her daughter’s dignity—had sent her off to a home-economics school to prepare her for her future responsibilities as a housewife. Clara had nearly perished there from boredom. With a tenacity that nobody had seen in her before, she had finally managed to prevail against her mother’s will. And now, she stood side by side in a fresh, white apron with her father in the pharmacy. Clever Clara had made her own dream come true, while she, Jo, had simply thrown her own dreams in the gutter.
    Clara sighed. “But my father will be back to his old ways soon enough—being a know-it-all and hovering over my shoulder when I’m boiling soap or making liniment. A new doctor’s coming by this evening as Fritsche’s successor. It’s taken so long to find anyone willing to take over his practice . . .”
    None of them could think of anything else to say on the subject, and a silence settled over them. The illusion that they were just having a casual chat burst like a bubble, and all three of them suddenly felt self-conscious.
    I’m sorry, Josephine wanted to say. She felt the words on her lips, but she kept them inside. “I’m sorry” was what you said when you stepped on someone’s foot. In her case, it would never have been enough.
    Isabelle cleared her throat. “We should probably be getting along. I . . . I still have to study my French vocabulary—Madame Blanche has set a test for tomorrow. Again! And there’s an English test coming up, too. I’d like to know what the point of all these foreign languages is. I’m never going to get out of Berlin. Besides, we’ve been invited to a ball this evening, and we’ll need time to get ready.”
    Josephine smiled. “Your hair is already perfect. Please don’t tell me you’re going to spend hours getting it done again.”
    Isabelle rolled her eyes. “It is my father’s wish that I always look perfectly turned out.”
    “Has some marriage prospect turned up?” Jo asked, feigning interest. When would the guard come to fetch her? Did she have to go back to Krotzmann? A cold