“Life is much different here than it is in Germany,” Sarah suggested. “I expect Gerda had some trouble adjusting.”

Agnes’s expression grew instantly angry. “She had no trouble! She was like an American girl at once! As soon as she started working with those other girls-they are bad ones! They got Gerda in trouble, all the time, trouble. Staying out late at night so she would be too tired to get awake in the morning for work. Going to dancing, meeting strange men.” Agnes shook her head in despair, and Sarah noticed she was rubbing her side without even realizing it. Sarah glanced at the pendant watch she wore pinned to her shirtwaist, making note of the time.

“Lars tried to tell her,” Agnes explained, desperate to make Sarah understand that they had attempted to stop her. “He told her those men would not marry a girl who goes to dancing all the time and stays out half the night, but she would not listen. She would not listen to anyone. I know something bad will happen. I tell her that.”

“And what did happen?” Sarah asked as gently as she could.

Agnes squeezed her eyes shut, as if she could close out the pain. “She did not come home last night. Lars, he goes out to look for her, but he cannot find her anywhere. No one can find her. I hardly sleep all night for fear. And then that police comes here. A police! To my house!” Her eyes pleaded with Sarah to understand her outrage, and Sarah had no trouble doing so. In Germany, the police would never have occasion to visit the home of a respectable family, and the same was true in America.

Then Agnes’s blotched and swollen features crumbled under the weight of her grief again. “They find her today. In an alley. She was… Her face…” It was all she could do to choke out the words. “The police said someone beat her.”

“She was beaten to death?” Sarah asked when Agnes hesitated, the words as painful to say as they were to hear. Only sixteen years old and beaten to death like an animal.