Quickly, she went back and pulled the covers over Nainsi’s ashen face.
Maria stood in the doorway, cradling the baby and watching with glistening eyes. Sarah gently guided her out into the hallway, closing the door behind them. No one would disturb Nainsi’s body, Sarah was sure. No one in this house had wanted to be near her even when she was alive.
Downstairs they found Valentina sitting at the kitchen table, her eyes red and her face white. Lorenzo was trying to get her to sip some brandy. The large room where meals for a hundred could easily be prepared was redolent of garlic and onions and a dozen magnificent spices that made Sarah’s mouth water even though she’d eaten only an hour earlier.
Maria told Lorenzo to go out and get the things Sarah wrote down that they would need for the baby. Then she changed the boy while Sarah made a sugar teat by wrapping a spoonful of sugar in a clean cloth and tying it off with string to make a ghost-shaped object. Then she wet the ghost’s head and gave it to the baby to suck. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it was wet and tasted good, so he kept after it. The apprehension in Maria’s eyes began to fade.
“He will be all right?” she asked.
Sarah didn’t want to make any rash promises. “He won’t die from this, if that’s what you mean, and he seems to be very healthy and strong. Feeding a baby with bottles is dangerous, though. Sometimes they do fine, and other times . . .
Other times, they don’t.”
He wouldn’t be Maria’s problem anyway, Sarah couldn’t help thinking, but she didn’t bother to say it. She was too grateful that someone here cared about him.
“He’d be better off dead,” Valentina said with an air of authority.
Maria and Sarah gaped at her.
“Well, he would,” she insisted righteously, the color returning to her cheeks. “His mother’s dead, and he doesn’t have anybody to take care of him.”
“You are a wicked girl,” Maria told her angrily.
“I don’t care what you think,” Valentina said with a haughty toss of her long, dark braids. “I don’t care what anybody thinks. I never wanted that nasty little baby around here anyway, or his mother either. Nainsi O’Hara thought she was better than us, just because we’re Italian, but she was only dirty Shanty Irish. She never had a new dress in her life, and she had to work in a factory before she married Antonio. She should’ve been grateful when he brought her here, but she wasn’t. She was mean to him and to all of us.”
“Valentina, have a little respect for the dead,” Maria said wearily.
“Why? She never had any respect for me.”
“You don’t deserve any,” Maria snapped. “Go away and leave us alone.”
With a sniff, Valentina rose and left the room.
Maria sighed. “I’m sorry. She is just a child, and she is very spoiled. Because she’s the baby and the only girl.”
“Of course,” Sarah said politely and started some water to boil in preparation for the supplies Lorenzo would bring.
When Lorenzo returned, Sarah warmed some of the milk and prepared a bottle. Maria offered it, and the baby took to it right away. He gulped down almost all of the milk before falling into an exhausted sleep in Maria’s arms.
“He is so beautiful,” Maria marveled, gazing down at him lovingly, like an adoring Madonna.
Sarah took the bottle so Maria would have both hands free to cradle him, and once again she considered how unfair life was. If only Maria had given birth to this boy, he would have been welcomed and adored.
“I should put him to bed so he can rest,” Maria said after a few moments.
“We’ll need his cradle,” Sarah said and watched Maria’s face fall as they both remembered where his cradle was and what had happened in that room.
Maria looked over to the corner where Lorenzo had with-drawn after returning from the store with the baby bottles.
He sat, forearms resting on his knees, watching Maria and the baby intently.
A silent communication passed between him and Maria, an understanding that surpassed words. “I will go,” he said, as if responding to a spoken request. Still, he rose reluctantly, unable to conceal his aversion to returning to the room where Nainsi’s body lay.
Sarah didn’t want to return either, but she needed to see the body again. She was anxious to discover the cause of Nainsi’s death. It was too soon for childbed fever to have developed, and the girl hadn’t been ill at all last night when Sarah left. A hemorrhage was a possibility, but she hadn’t had a chance to check for that. Sarah was mystified, and she needed to know she hadn’t missed anything that could have caused Nainsi’s death. If Sarah had been responsible . . .
“I’ll go with you,” Sarah said.
Surprise registered on Lorenzo’s face, but she also saw relief. “There’s no need,” he said perfunctorily.
“No, not at all,” Maria confirmed, her own distaste evident.
“Yes, there is,” Sarah replied, and started out of the room before either of them could protest again.
Lorenzo followed her up the stairs this time, and both of them walked more slowly than they had earlier. No one was screaming, and they felt no urgency. Sarah didn’t wait for Lorenzo. She opened the door and went on in, steeling herself against the horror of such a tragic death. Not letting herself look at Nainsi’s body, she quickly gathered the rest of the baby things she saw stacked neatly on the dresser and placed them in the cradle.
She heard Lorenzo’s footsteps stop just outside the doorway. When Sarah looked up, he was watching her, also carefully avoiding looking at the bed.
“Go ahead and take it downstairs,” Sarah said, indicating the cradle.
Still without so much as a glance at the dead girl, he quickly came in, picked up the cradle, and made his way out again. Sarah had expected him to bolt, but he hesitated when he realized Sarah wasn’t going with him.
“Are you coming?” he asked.
“In a minute. I just have to . . . I have to check something,” she said, managing a reassuring smile. She was getting very good at that.
“I’ll stay then,” he said, even though she could see he hated the thought.
“No, Maria needs the cradle. Go ahead. I’ll be fine. I’m a nurse,” she reminded him with another smile. “I’m used to death.”
It was a lie, of course. She’d never get used to it, but he believed her. Or at least he pretended to and left.
Sarah began her examination, gingerly drawing back the covers to reveal the entire body. She found no pool of blood to indicate the girl had hemorrhaged. An infection wouldn’t have had time to work yet, and she’d seen no signs to indicate any kind of distress at all yesterday. Sometimes people just died, Sarah knew, but this death was simply too convenient. No one in this house had liked Nainsi even before they’d discovered how she’d tricked Antonio. Mrs. O’Hara had reminded them last night that Catholic marriages could not be easily dissolved. Antonio could have thrown Nainsi and the baby out, but divorce wasn’t an option, even if the baby wasn’t his, so he’d never be able to remarry without being banned from the church.
Sarah started to examine the body more closely, looking for any signs of violence. She noticed that one of Nainsi’s fingernails was torn, the jagged end not completely ripped off.
Gooseflesh rose on Sarah’s arms. Fingernails didn’t easily tear like that. She looked at Nainsi’s vacant eyes, still staring at nothing, and this time she saw something she had missed before. Red dots, like pinpricks in the whites of her eyes and on her face, too. Sarah wasn’t sure what that meant, but she’d never seen dots like that on a woman who’d died in childbirth. Carefully, Sarah closed the girl’s eyes.
She was so engrossed in her work, she hadn’t noticed the sounds of someone coming down the hall until she heard a howl of anguish that made her jump. Mrs. O’Hara stood in the doorway, paralyzed with horror as Lorenzo had been this morning.
“No, no, no,” she kept saying, over and over, as she stared at the body. “Not my Nainsi, it can’t be my Nainsi,” she insisted as the tears pooled in her eyes. “She’s all I’ve got, the only one left. Not my Nainsi!”
Sarah hurried to comfort her, helping her to one of the chairs Sarah and Maria had brought in for themselves yesterday while they’d been waiting for the baby to arrive. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. O’Hara,” she murmured, hating the
