Two HOURS LATER Sarah was washing her hands at the kitchen sink when one of the neighbor women brought over a plate covered with a napkin.

“Mr. Otto will be hungry when he comes home,” Mrs. Shultz explained, setting it down on the table. She was a short woman of ample girth who took great pride in the neatness of her appearance. “How is Mrs. Otto doing?”

“She’s fine. She had another little girl.”

“Already? I didn’t hear a thing!”

“The labor went quickly.” Sarah didn’t mention that the baby had hardly cried. That worried her. That and the way Agnes had shown hardly any interest in the child. Sarah had made sure the baby nursed before Agnes fell into an exhausted sleep, but she was very much afraid Agnes’s milk wouldn’t come in if she didn’t calm down soon. Unfortunately, Sarah couldn’t think of any way to help her, short of bringing Agnes’s sister back to life.

“Did she tell you what happened?” Mrs. Shultz asked. “To her sister, I mean.”

“A little,” Sarah admitted, wanting to hear the facts of the case from someone less emotional about them. “She said Gerda was killed.”

“Someone beat her like a dog and left her to die in some filthy alley,” Mrs. Shultz informed her righteously, folding her arms under her ample breasts. She was also of German descent, but had been in America long enough to have lost most of her accent.

“Do they know who did it?” Sarah asked, drying her hands on one of Agnes’s immaculate towels.

“No, and they will never find out, either, if you ask me. That girl, she got just what she deserved. What did she expect? Going out every night, flaunting herself at those dance houses. No decent girls go to those places, I can tell you that.”

“I’m sure she was only trying to have a good time,” Sarah said, for some reason feeling obliged to defend the dead girl. Maybe because she was so young. Sarah could remember what it was like to be so young and wish for freedom and happiness.