Mr. Jameson said evenly. “Just let me get you all settled in first. It doesn’t make sense to get her back without a place to take her, does it?” He sighed. “So you know, I objected to all of this from the very beginning,” he told Olivia. “Faking her death, using her as an Alarm to let us know when you were coming. I’m glad it’s over.”
I remembered then what I had overheard so many nights ago, when I had first moved into the church. That whispered conversation, Mr. Jameson feeling nearly sick about a girl who was directly above him. Rosa. I could feel all of this from him without even having to touch him. But that didn’t excuse it. I stepped away from him, letting him feel the distance between us.
“You still did it,” Olivia said, her eyes on his, hard and unforgiving. “You went along with it, what Mother Morevna told you to do. And even if I had trusted you before, I can never trust you completely now.”
“I understand,” he said, a thread of pain running through his voice. “And I don’t expect your trust. But I want you to know this: All this time, I made sure no harm ever came to Rosa and that she had all she needed. And if you want enemies, girl, look all around you, but don’t make one out of me, not when I’m trying my best to help you.”
Olivia was quiet. She didn’t necessarily trust Mr. Jameson—how could she?—but I could tell by the set of her jaw that she would call it a truce for now.
Through the open, sheet-covered windows of a nearby house, we heard the sound of someone sobbing. Loud, racking sobs that sounded like the poor person would surely be broken in two by her own weeping. On the porch, a man sat with a homemade cigarette, too beaten down by sadness to even look up as we walked by.
“I don’t like it here,” Mowse whispered. Susanah took her hand and said nothing.
“What’s happened?” Asa asked Mr. Jameson. “It seems a bit… heavier in here since we left.”
“A Dust Sickness outbreak,” Mr. Jameson said. “The worst we’ve ever had. And more than that. We’ve only got one week left. People don’t take doom well.”
Asa and I exchanged guilty glances. All we could do was what we came to do. To set it right again. To be the saviors we each had wanted so desperately to be. And now we had no other choice.
As we walked, I scanned the crowd, looking over heads, in between bodies. But the longer I looked, the more my heart sank. The face I was looking for was nowhere in sight. I started to look up where the white-clad morticians were laying another body to rest, bricking it up in the walls.
“Where’s Lucy Arbor, Mr. Jameson?” I asked. “Is she…?”
“Lucy Arbor?” He thought. “She’s all right, last I heard. Been spending a lot of time at the hospital, helping out. I’d have thought she’d come down here to see you. Maybe she’s still working with Nurse Gladys.”
“I’d have thought so too,” I said, my heart sinking painfully, dragging the rest of me down. “Maybe I was wrong.”
When we stopped in front of a two-story house with darkened windows, Mr. Jameson reached into his pocket and pulled out a jingling ring of keys.
“The last lady to live here died a week ago, so this one’s open,” said Mr. Jameson. The house had been white, long ago. White with green trim, it looked like. But now the paint had been almost completely stripped from the wooden planks. The roof was missing more shingles than it had been before, and the windows were caked with dust, but it was a house, and it was big enough for all of us.
We brought our horses to a stop by the side of the house and followed Mr. Jameson to the door, our boots leaving prints on the dusty porch. He opened the door with a creak.
We stepped into the house, which was like any other in Elysium, with newspapered walls, a round wooden table, an old green stove visible through the kitchen door. Though the woman who’d owned it hadn’t been out of it for long, it was already almost ankle-deep in dust. The stairs to the right were caked with it, and the windows were so bad that we couldn’t see out them.
“I’ll get Mrs. Winthrop to send water and rags for y’all in