I don’t know what I would do without you.”
She looked down at her pink hand in his big brown one. The hands that had raised her were strong and capable, but she couldn’t help but notice the knuckles were starting to swell with rheumatism. Eli had always been clever with a knife, and carved intricate figurines and talismans, including the death’s head pendant that Tabby wore around her neck. He hadn’t been a young man when he’d found her, and that had been twelve years ago. She often wondered how long he would be able to continue his work when it required so much labor. From what he had told her, he was the only one willing to take on the job as caretaker after this particular cemetery had fallen out of fashion with Boston’s wealthy elite. The cemetery was filled with hundreds of unmarked graves of slaves and the African community, and Eli had left his job as a fishmonger and stepped up when no one else would. “Someone’s got to care for them, remember them,” he had told her. Because that was what Eli did; he cared for things that were broken and forgotten.
Brushing his cheek with a kiss, Tabby squeezed his hand. “And I don’t know what I would do without you.”
* * *
Thick banks of clouds were rolling in from the harbor, but the day was mild and perfumed with the fresh scent of pollen when Tabby stepped outside with her basket on her elbow. Spring in the cemetery meant lush grass beneath her feet, tulips and narcissus clustered about the old stones, and flowering crab apple trees that begged to be climbed—even if she was much too old for such things.
“Tabby!”
She spun around to see a young woman waving at her coming up the street. Tall and raven haired with ivory skin, Mary-Ruth turned heads as she walked by, but also cleared a path, like Moses parting the Red Sea. Tabby watched as one little boy, braver than his friends, darted right up to her to try to touch her skirt. Mary-Ruth stuck her tongue out at him, which sent him scuttling back to the safety of his playmates. Children always seemed to regard her with equal parts fascination and terror, as if she were some beautiful angel of death.
“What are you doing up this way?” Tabby asked her friend when she’d reached the cemetery. “I haven’t heard of any recent passings.”
Mary-Ruth linked her arm through Tabby’s as they passed through the gate together. “Old Mr. Drew,” she said, shaking her head. “The gin finally got the better of him. Just came from the house and thought I would see what you were doing.”
Wherever there was death, there was Mary-Ruth. A layer, Mary-Ruth was summoned whenever someone had died and the family needed them dressed and laid out for burial. Almost all of the bodies that came through the cemetery gates first passed under Mary-Ruth’s capable hands. Her blithesome, sunny demeanor may have seemed anathema to the somber nature of her vocation, but like Tabby, she was something of an outsider, and Tabby had gradually lowered her guard and let Mary-Ruth into her heart. Like Eli, Mary-Ruth was no stranger to the world of the dead, and so Tabby could trust her—to an extent. They talked about everything, from Mary-Ruth’s patients to Tabby’s embroidery projects, to the influx of Irish coming over on coffin ships just as Mary-Ruth had nine years ago. Everything, except the secret of Tabby’s ability, which she guarded like a starving dog with a bone.
“Oh, nothing interesting.” Tabby lifted her empty basket to show her. “Just out to pick up the old bouquets. I don’t suppose you would want to join me?”
“Of course! It’s a lovely spring day and I’ve been cooped up inside with naught but the dead to keep me company. Did you know,” she said, throwing Tabby a sidelong look, “that Gracie Peck has stopped watching? Her back is too bad now to sit up long nights anymore.”
Gracie Peck was a watcher, or “watch woman,” the counterpart to Mary-Ruth. She would sit up with the sick and dying until they exhaled their last breath, and then would watch them for hours to make certain that they were not like to draw a breath again. There was no greater fear for the dying than to wake up very much alive in a coffin. When their charge was well and truly dead, the watcher would send for Mary-Ruth.
Tabby shook her