With that the boy finally roused, jerking in Jack’s arms. He opened his mouth and wailed, full throated, insulted, alive, his lethargy banished.

Anna had dropped the bloody instruments back into the basin and picked up a square of damp gauze. When she turned back to Jack she gave him a small, tight smile. “Almost finished,” she said. “Hold him still, please.”

Inside the open mouth the small tongue flapped wildly, as if sudden freedom were more than it could manage. This time when Anna opened the boy’s mouth he tried to turn away from her, but she held his face firmly and packed gauze under his tongue.

“It will stop bleeding quite quickly,” she said. As if Jack had challenged her somehow.

Then she looked up and gestured to the matron, who stood in the shadows by the door. Reluctantly the woman came toward them, her arms crossed at her waist.

“I will report this,” she began, and Anna cut her off with a motion of her hand.

“Not before I do,” she said. “Now listen, because you need to remember and follow these directions I’m about to give you exactly.”

Jack had never served in the army, but he had the idea that no general could sound more sure of himself as he sent men into battle. Anna rattled off instructions on how and when to change the dressings, what and when and how much to feed the boy, what trouble signs to watch for. The matron was to rinse out his mouth with salt water three times a day.

“The wet nurse must be patient with him when he’s feeding,” Anna said. “He will have forgotten how to suckle, and it will take a little time for the natural instinct to come back to him. You can be sure that his hunger will overcome the discomfort of the incision once he realizes his belly is filling up. It may take a half hour for him to get his fill, but that will improve quickly. If his malnutrition is not too far advanced, he may recover. His chances are not good, but they are better than they were ten minutes ago.”

She had been wiping and packing her instruments while she talked, but now she turned to look the matron in the eye. “You must scrub your hands in very hot water and potash soap before you deal with the dressing. You should be scrubbing your hands before you handle any of these children and using carbolic acid in a five percent solution. Never go from one to the next without doing so. Your hands are the most likely source of infection.”

Through all this the baby had been wailing, but Anna’s concentration was fixed on the matron.

“You understand these instructions?”

Reluctantly, her anger plain on her face, the matron nodded.

“If you feel you can’t follow these simple directions, I’ll find the doctor on call—there is a doctor on call, I assume? And go over it with him. Never mind, I’ll do that anyway.”

“That won’t be necessary,” the matron said, her voice fairly dripping with dislike.

Anna looked at her for a long moment. “However you feel about me, you will not take it out on this child. Someone will be coming by tomorrow and again the day after to check on his progress. If he is not improving, I will report you to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. You would not enjoy their examination, I assure you. Do we understand each other?”

Anna took the boy from Jack and held him to her shoulder, rocking him back and forth with her mouth pressed to his ear while she watched the matron struggle to speak.

“Yes,” the woman said finally.

“I hope so,” Anna said. “Primarily for his sake, but also for yours.”

•   •   •

THE SUN WAS low on the horizon by the time the police ferry had moved away from Randall’s Island. Anna was very quiet, and Jack left her to her thoughts while he coped with his own. He had never doubted her intelligence or her training, but now he had a real sense of who she was, as a woman and a doctor.

She roused him from his thoughts by touching his arm.

She said, “My mother died in childbed. I was just three but I remember some of that day. Ma was too old, really, and the pregnancy was a surprise. She herself was born when her mother was near fifty and she drew strength from that. But she went into labor too early and very suddenly while my father was out on a call. There was a—” She paused. “It’s called a placental abruption, a tearing of the womb. I don’t remember any of those details, of course. I learned about all that much later. What I remember is the look on my father’s face when he came in the door and found he had lost my mother and the new baby both.”

She paused to gather her thoughts.

“Not long after, he died in a carriage accident. It was his fault, he wasn’t paying attention. I have always thought that if he had been with her when she died, he might have been less—devastated, I suppose is the word. He might have coped with his grief differently.”

Her tone was very even, and when she raised her eyes to his they were clear.

She said, “I don’t know if it would help or hurt Rosa to see her father. I really haven’t known her long enough to anticipate her reaction.” And then: “What are you thinking?”

The urge to move closer was one Jack resisted in that moment. He said, “I’m thinking that you weren’t with either of your parents when they died.”

She jerked as if he had struck her. “I’m aware of that. Obviously.”

“I’m thinking that somehow, as logical as you are, you still blame yourself for their deaths because you weren’t with them. I can see it in your face when you talk about it.”

“I was a little girl,” she said, her voice catching. “I was just a baby.”

Jack put his arm around her and pulled her into his side. She came to him without hesitation, letting herself be held. They stood just like that at the rail and watched as a storm came in from the west, moving like a great wave in the sky to overpower the sunset and displace the night itself. In the distance the first flicker of lightning and the breeze that washed over them made her shiver. He felt it.

When she turned in the circle of his arm she had to put her head back to look at him, and so he kissed her. It was a gentle, almost-nothing kiss and still through all the clothes between them he felt her tremble, as aware, as alive as the light that forked through the sky. He kissed her again in just the same way, a question without words. In reply she raised a hand and cupped his cheek. Her palm was cold—he had forgotten to give her back her gloves, he realized now—but her touch was sure. This time she met him halfway, her free hand curled into his lapel, her kiss open and warm and welcoming. A strong woman, fragile in his arms.

•   •   •

AT HOME THE little girls had already been put to bed and Sophie had gone out on a call. There was no sign of Mrs. Lee or Margaret, either, but Aunt Quinlan was waiting for her in the parlor. There was a fire in the hearth, which was a welcome counterpoint to the rain on the roof. All the drapes had been drawn shut with the exception of one, where Aunt Quinlan sat to watch the storm.

She had an open book in her lap but no light except the fire and the occasional blue-white splash of lightning. Anna sat down beside her and watched the trees bending in the wind.

“Did Mr. Lee get things in the garden tied down in time?”

“He always does,” her aunt said with a small smile. “I’m looking forward to the garden this summer. I might move out there entirely, dressing table and clothes closet included.”

Aunt Quinlan had grown up in a small village on the very edge of the northern forests, a world different in every way from the one she inhabited now. Anna had been born in that same village but had only the vaguest memories of it.

Now she said, “Is it the spring that makes you more homesick than usual?”

“I suppose it must be. My da has been on my mind today. Now are you going to tell me why it is Detective Sergeant Mezzanotte just helped you out of a cab, or must I torture you to get that information?”

“No torture necessary,” Anna said. “He came to the hospital to tell me that he found—” She glanced behind herself to be absolutely sure they were alone. “Mr. Russo. The girls’ father.”

She related the details as briefly as she could manage. The story of the Infant Hospital she kept to herself, and might never tell at all.

It was true that Aunt Quinlan was not easily surprised, but Anna had expected a little bit more of a reaction when she heard about Mr. Russo’s condition.

Her aunt said, “I didn’t think we’d ever know for sure. That will be a comfort to the girls. Not tomorrow or the day after, but in time. And Rosa has such an imagination, she might have gotten lost in all the things that could have happened to him.”

“You think I should tell them right away?”

The lily-blue gaze met hers calmly. “You are the one to make that decision.”

“I don’t want to lie to them.”

“You don’t want to hurt them,” Aunt Quinlan corrected her. “But it will hurt, there’s no avoiding it. You know that.”

“As a doctor, yes, I know that. But it’s different—”