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“Hester knows, the moment she sets foot in the marketplace, that it will be a bad day. She keeps an ear open as she picks her way between market stalls, haggling less than usual over the price of salt, skeins of wool, the small, sweet oranges Annie loves so much. The morning is cold and slushy with the last of the latest snowfall. The old stone buildings lining either side of the street are crooked—the whole town is crooked, narrow, every building leaning in as if to hear whatever gossip is going around now—but today they seem more crooked than usual, looming over the marketplace until they threaten to suffocate it.
The whispers are everywhere.
“He was dead, I tell you.”
“That’s what I heard.”
Hester listens as she slips through the market. She takes the small, soft
