“Oh, yes, she did. Alicia was the very image of Mina at the same age. Sometimes I even called her Mina by mistake. I know she didn’t like it, but she never let on. She was so sweet.” Her eyes filled with tears, and for a moment, Sarah regretted causing her such pain, but then she realized that Mrs. VanDamm was unable to hold onto that pain for more than a moment. Her watery gaze drifted, and along with it her attention. “Oh, I saw you admiring my bed. It’s Marie Antoinette’s.”

“I beg your pardon?” Sarah asked, confused.

“It’s an exact replica of Marie Antoinette’s bed. She used to receive her attendants while she was still in bed. It’s a French custom, don’t you know? But Marie wasn’t French and she didn’t like having all those people coming up to her bed, so she had them put up a fence to keep them from getting too close. Isn’t that clever?”

Sarah had no idea if it was clever or not, but she nodded and smiled politely and tried to figure out how to turn the conversation back to Alicia. She need not have worried. Mrs. VanDamm might be vague, but she hadn’t slipped entirely away.

“Please tell me, Sarah, how did Alicia come to be living at that boardinghouse?” she asked after a moment.

“I believe she ran away from Greentree.”

“That’s nonsense. Why would she run away? She had no reason.”

Sarah knew Alicia had a very good reason, but she was fairly sure Mrs. VanDamm didn’t know it, and even if she did, would never admit it. “I believe she was upset by a marriage her father was arranging for her,” she tried.

Mrs. VanDamm frowned as she considered this. “I had no idea she was upset. I didn’t think she even knew. Cornelius had talked about it, of course, but I couldn’t agree. I thought she was too young, although I wasn’t much older than she when I married Cornelius. I think marriage can be good for some girls, don’t you? Especially to an older man. Cornelius is twelve years my senior, and he helped me settle down. I remember how proud I was to be seen with him when I was a bride. He was so handsome and tall.”

For a moment, she seemed lost in her memories of happier times, while Sarah tried to picture Mrs. VanDamm as a sixteen-year-old bride to her twenty-eight-year-old groom. Although it wasn’t the perfect picture, it was still a long way from Alicia and Sylvester Mattingly, who must be over sixty.

“Do you know who the man was?” Sarah asked, hoping against hope Mrs. VanDamm could shed some light on the uneven match. “The man her father was planning for her to marry?”

“Oh, yes, but I don’t think Cornelius would have gone through with it. He doted on Alicia too much to let her go just yet. And while I think the husband should always be older than the wife, the man Cornelius had in mind was much too old. Too young and too old, do you see? When I was young, many girls married at sixteen, but nowadays, that’s not done anymore. She hadn’t even made her debut. She would have missed so much.”

And now she will miss everything, Sarah thought, but of course she didn’t say it. “Alicia must have thought her father would go through with it, or she wouldn’t have run away,” she pointed out instead.

“That’s something I still don’t understand. How could she have gotten away? How would she have known where to go?”

“Someone must have helped her,” Sarah offered, remembering Malloy’s pledge to keep the groom’s help a secret. “Perhaps a friend. Can you think of anyone who would have done that? A young man perhaps, someone her own age who might have been smitten with her.” Someone who could have gotten her with child, she added silently, praying it wasn’t Sylvester Mattingly, as she suspected. The thought was simply too awful to contemplate, although it would have explained Alicia’s flight perfectly.

But Mrs. VanDamm was shaking her head helplessly. “I can’t think of anyone. Our neighbors at Greentree had some boys, I think, but they’re away at school. I don’t believe Alicia knows them, either.”

Plainly, all this thinking was too much for her. She lifted a hand to her head and closed her eyes as if in pain.

“Are you all right? Can I get you something?” Sarah asked, instantly contrite. Morphine addict or not, Mrs. VanDamm was still a grieving mother.

“My salts,” she said, motioning vaguely toward the assortment of medicine bottles on the table.

Sarah picked through the bottles, seeing Lydia Pink-ham’s Remedy, which claimed to cure all manner of female ills but which merely masked them with a morphine fog. After a moment, she located the bottle of smelling salts. Lifting the stopper, she passed the foul-smelling bottle under Mrs. VanDamm’s nose until her eyes popped open again and her color returned.

“Oh, thank you, my dear. I get these spells where I get so weak and…” Her voice trailed off as her unfocused gaze suddenly focused on Sarah. “Did Bridget tell me that you’re a midwife?”

“Yes, that’s right. And a trained nurse, as well.”

“Why didn’t I think of this before?” she asked of no one in particular. “I’ve been wasting my time with doctors. The doctors are all men. What do men know about female problems?”

“Are you having female problems?” Sarah asked solicitously, thinking that she might gain Mrs. VanDamm’s confidence by giving her some medical advice. If she was consulting with Sarah, she would certainly welcome her back for another visit if Sarah needed more information later.

“Oh, yes, for years now, and nothing helps. I have these spells when I feel weak and I can’t get my breath, and other times my head feels like it’s coming off my body. And sometimes, if I’m very still and quiet, I can actually hear my heart beating. That isn’t natural, is it, to hear one’s own heart beating?”

Sarah thought it probably was if you were listening for it, but she chose to humor Mrs. VanDamm. Perhaps she did have some problem that Sarah’s training could help. Sarah began to question her about her symptoms, and Mrs. VanDamm was only too happy to describe them in great detail. Apparently, she had nothing more to occupy her time than to sit here alone in the semidarkness and concentrate on every sensation of her own body.

She quickly learned that Mrs. VanDamm, who was not quite fifty, had completed menopause and was probably just experiencing the effects of it. “Do you find marital relations uncomfortable?” Sarah asked, ready to give Mrs. VanDamm some tips on how to alleviate that discomfort, but Mrs. VanDamm was shaking her head.

“Oh, dear, I always found marital relations uncomfortable,” she confessed, rolling her eyes. “I can’t imagine how other women manage. After Mina was born, I told Mr. VanDamm I couldn’t endure his attentions anymore, and to his credit, he hasn’t bothered me since. It’s been over thirty years now, and I haven’t missed it at all, I assure you.”

Sarah was so shocked that for a moment she couldn’t even remember what they’d been discussing. She wasn’t shocked to learn that Mrs. VanDamm didn’t have intercourse with her husband. Many women of her class felt as she did, which was why so many men of her class kept mistresses. No, what shocked her was the realization that if Mrs. VanDamm hadn’t had sexual relations since Mina was born, she couldn’t possibly have been Alicia’s mother.