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Dear Molly,

Life is unpredictable. Like an episode of Columbo, it never turns out quite the way you think it will. Some hitch takes things in a new direction you could never have foreseen from the outset.

So it was for me when at the age of seventeen, pregnant, I left the only home I’d ever known. In my suitcase, I packed my roomiest clothes, the blank diary from Mrs.Mead, a little bit of cash, and the Fabergé egg, which neither Papa nor Mama knew I’d taken with me.

There was no fanfare at my departure. I said a curt goodbye to Mama, but Papa refused to see me off. A black car arrived and a chauffeur I’d never met before drove me hours away to a sagging, unmarked farmhouse in the nondescript countryside, where I was greeted by Mrs.Lynch, the stern-faced matron who ran the place. She had straight black hair and slits for eyes. Judgment was writ so large on her face that it was no surprise when her first words to me were “So you got yourself in trouble.”

Though I wasn’t yet showing, she stared at my midriff as though the devil itself was lodged in my womb. I expected Mrs.Lynch to take my suitcase and show me into the farmhouse, but she walked right past me to the chauffeur’s window, where he handed her an envelope, which disappeared into her bosom.

The car drove away, and wordlessly she marched toward the house as I followed, suitcase in hand. The house was clean and spare, with wood finishings polished to a high shine, homemade white eyelet curtains on every window, and wooden floors that groaned as though the burden of feet upon them was too much to bear.

I was escorted to a room upstairs, Mrs.Lynch pointing out the door and then turning on her heel to leave. But when I opened that door, the room was occupied.

“Mrs.Lynch,” I said. “This is the wrong room. There are three girls in here already.”

She looked at me wryly. “Did you expect a private apartment complete with maid and room service?” She laughed, a sound bereft of all joy. “Yours is the fourth bunk, farthest from the window. The girls don’t bite—unless you deserve it.” She turned and walked away.

I crept into the room and stood there as three wide-eyed young ladies, their pregnancies much more advanced than mine, assessed me from head to toe.

“So you’re the new one,” said a girl with a moon face and big blue eyes.

“Miss Moneybags the Turd,” said a short, curly-haired girl as she crossed her arms against her sizable belly.

“Look at her suitcase, all prissy and proper. Are you Mary Friggin’ Poppins?” asked the third, an olive-skinned girl in a dress so worn, I could see the silhouette of her skinny legs clear through it.

“I’m Flora Gray,” I said, putting down my suitcase to curtsy. “Pleased to meet you all.”

The moon-faced girl came to my side. “Don’t let them scare you,” she said. “They’ve just never met a princess before.”

“Oh, I’m not a princess,” I said.

“The hell you aren’t,” said the spindly girl, as she pointed at my silk blouse.

“I’m Amelia,” said the moon-faced girl by my side. “That’s Bridget,” she said, nodding toward the curly-haired girl, “and that’s Dolores,” she added, gesturing to the spindly one with olive skin. “This is your bunk.” She picked up my suitcase and brought it over to a worn bunk bed, pointing to the mattress on top.

“Lovely,” I said as I looked around for a closet or a chest of drawers, but there was none. The other girls didn’t seem to have possessions, and I noticed that while clean, their shoes looked as worn out as the girls themselves. They’d all lost their sheen and shine.

I knew instantly that I didn’t belong. I’d never met girls like these, or if I had, I’d ignored them, believed I was above them. I soon learned that none of these girls could read. They hadn’t even made it through primary school, forced by circumstance and necessity to work from an early age. Their families were nuclear only in the sense of combustion, and they’d been handed off to some relative or “family friend” who’d shown them little care and who’d rendered them powerless and penniless.

I couldn’t believe Mama had sent me to such a place. At first, I thought there must be some mistake.

Mrs.Lynch greeted me at breakfast in the dining room the day after my arrival.

“How’d you sleep?” she asked. “Everything up to snuff?”

“Actually,” I said sheepishly, “the room is a tad drafty, and the mattress is quite worn. The springs are poking through. I don’t suppose you could spare another blanket and pillow?”

“Of course!” she replied. “While I’m at it, why don’t I get you a free stay at the Ritz. I hear the staff check for peas under the mattresses so your beauty rest isn’t disturbed,” she said, punctuating this with a mock curtsy that made all the girls laugh.

As you can guess, no extra blanket or pillow ever appeared, and I was not moved to the Ritz, or anywhere for that matter. In fact, my pillow soon vanished, and only a week later did I see it again, on top of the manure pile by the barn. I slept with my head on my suitcase, and when no one was watching, I stuffed the Fabergé and the diary into my mattress, safely hidden under the popped coils.

My only solace at the farmhouse was Amelia, the moon-faced girl. She was kind and gentle, clearly underprivileged, but a walking heart. She kept me safe from the others. And she truly believed I was a princess. Nothing I could say would convince her otherwise. She begged to hear about my life, and I shared with her.

“I lived in a manor house,” I said. “With Mama and Papa.”

“Was there a butler?” she asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“And a maid?”

“More than one,” I answered.

“Was there a ballroom?” she asked.

“Indeed,” I replied. “And a parlor, and a library, and a conservatory.”

“See?” she said. “You are a princess.”

She asked me question after question, demanding every detail, delighting in every nuance I shared.

“Tell me again about your father’s library,” she’d say. “How many shelves of books? And the volumes had gold writing on the spines?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“And the silver pantry in the basement. Describe it again.”

I would detail the rows and rows of platters and chargers, gravy dishes and silver spoons that Mrs.Mead and Penelope polished to a high shine. As we folded clothes, scrubbed floors, or toiled over boiling pots in the kitchen, Amelia would listen to me describe every detail of Gray Manor, for this is how we whiled away the time in the farmhouse, not sprawled on lounge chairs while our bellies burgeoned, but put to hard labor as penance for our sins.

Mrs.Lynch worked us to the bone. There was a laundry in the basement that serviced well-to-do households in town; a chicken coop that yielded eggs sold by Mrs.Lynch at the back door; a garden we tended with vegetables sent to Sunday market; curtains, coverlets, and quilts all sewn by hand and sold to a high-end boutique in town. There was nothing Mrs.Lynch didn’t monetize, the money always going straight to her bosom. I swear there was a bank in there, filled with funds for her and her alone.

For my months at the farmhouse, I woke before dawn and went to bed just after dusk, exhausted and worn. I got used to my rusty mattress and learned to sleep through anything—springs digging into my side, snoring and nightmares, weeping in the dead of night (an altogether common sound). Every night, I prayed I’d done the right thing, reminded myself that I had chosen this for the sake of John, so that he would not have to suffer for my mistakes. It would only be a few months, and then I would go back home to the life I knew.

All the while, the baby in my belly grew, and one day, as I held my hand to it, I felt that little being ripple and move. Then, it was stronger, doing kicks and somersaults. At night, when I couldn’t sleep, I felt the shift beneath my palms, and I swear I could feel that baby trying to reach for my hand. Molly, my unborn child became my best friend. In my mind, I spoke to it and reassured it. “We’ll get through this—you and me. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

One day, as Amelia and I were sweeping out the chicken coop, I decided to ask her a burning question. By that point, her belly was as round as her face, and I knew her time was coming soon. “Amelia, who’s the father?” I ventured, thinking we were close enough that I could ask.

She put down her broom, her big blue eyes wide with shock.

“Never, ever ask that,” she whispered. “If you’d asked any of the other girls, they’d’ve scratched your eyes out.”

I was shocked and speechless. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“We don’t all live in manor houses, Flora. For us, there’s no fairy-tale ending.”

I apologized again, and she picked up her broom, sweeping my comment out of the coop alongside the excrement.

Once a month, all of us girls were taken to what they called the “giddyup room.” It was a small office on the main floor, where our feet were put in stirrups, and we were poked and prodded by a visiting physician. Mrs.Lynch stood vigil in the room, and when the doctor pronounced his verdict, “Fit as a fiddle,” in my case or “Anemic. Needs more meat,” about Amelia, he spoke only to Mrs.Lynch. It was as if we mothers-to-be were not even there.

Sometimes, well-dressed couples would visit the farmhouse, and as we toiled away in the laundry or stooped in the garden, Mrs.Lynch would bring them around to look at us. They’d whisper and point like we were zoo animals, and we girls were instructed not to address them directly. These silent visits were reminders of what would happen to our babies once they were born, something none of us could bear to think about or even discuss amongst ourselves.

Two months went by, and I had no word from my parents. I asked Mrs.Lynch every day if she’d received a call, a telegram, a letter—anything.

She shrugged and said, “No.”

But one day when she was out of earshot, Amelia found me. “She burns mail, you know. I’ve seen her. Takes the checks out, then burns the rest. Don’t give up hope. Your parents are waiting for you.”

Whether that was true or not, I never found out, but her words lit a much-needed candle in the dark.

After three full months, I still had not experienced a birth in the farmhouse, and as it turned out, the first I witnessed was Amelia’s. She went into labor in the middle of the night, waking me with her piercing scream. Mrs.Lynch and the girls, myself included, led her to the giddyup room, where she lay on the examining table. Her moon face was ashen and covered in sweat. Mrs.Lynch and some of the girls knew the drill, prompted her to push, offered her a hand to squeeze. I had no idea what to do and watched from the sidelines, flinching with every bloodcurdling cry.

I will save you from the details of what occurred next, Molly, but suffice it to say things did not go well. The doctor was called but far too late. When he arrived, he checked Amelia’s pulse and shook his head. He looked around and diagnosed the patient in two sharp statements. “Hemorrhage,” he said to Mrs.Lynch. “Nothing to be done.”

“Get a sheet from the laundry downstairs,” Mrs.Lynch ordered, but my feet were stuck to the floor, my eyes glued to the savage scene on the table in front of me. “Go! Make yourself useful.”

I rushed off, returning a few moments later with a sheet as thin as a shroud.

Dolores took it from me and laid it over Amelia’s pale body, covering both her and the silent pink bundle one of the girls had placed in the crook of her lifeless arm. Eventually, a hearse arrived at the house, and Amelia was loaded into it, though the pink bundle remained behind on the giddyup table.

Everyone knew the next steps, had clearly been through this, either at the farmhouse or in their lives before. At dawn, while Mrs.Lynch watched from a window, I followed the girls to the field beyond the garden, where crooked barn-board crosses nestled amongst tall, swaying grasses. I’d noticed them before, but in my na?veté, I thought they marked some farmer’s pet cemetery, his tributes to old sheepdogs laid to rest. But when the shovels came out and we began to dig, I realized how daft I’d been, my mother’s harsh words echoing in my head— our daughter’s as green as a bean.

As I joined in the burial of Amelia’s stillborn child, I made a vow to myself and to my unborn babe: This won’t happen—not to you, and not to me. My child kicked in my belly, making its presence known. That little life was conceived out of love, and it would be born into love. I promised I would bring that baby into the world, and I would remain its mother for as long as I lived. All there was left to do was make it happen.