The Bone Garden: A Novel by Tess Gerritsen

girlhood bed with her.
    You are still beautiful to me. You will always be beautiful.
    In a little basket beside the bed, baby Meggie slept soundly, unaware of her mother’s passing, of her own precarious future. How clear it is that she is Aurnia’s child, thought Rose. The same red hair, the same sweetly curving mouth. For two days, Meggie had been nursed on the ward by three new mothers, who had willingly passed the child among them. They had all witnessed Aurnia’s agonies, and they knew that but for the whims of providence any one of them might also be a client for the coffin maker.
    Rose glanced up as a nurse approached. It was Miss Cabot, who had assumed authority since Nurse Poole’s death.
    “I’m sorry, Miss Connolly, but it’s time to transfer the deceased.”
    “She’s only just passed on.”
    “It’s been two hours now, and we have need of the bed.” The nurse handed a small bundle to Rose. “Your sister’s belongings.”
    Here were the pitifully few possessions that Aurnia had brought with her to the hospital: her soiled night frock and a hair ribbon and the cheap little ring of tin and colored glass that had been Aurnia’s good-luck charm since her girlhood. A charm that had, in the end, failed her.
    “Those go to the husband,” Nurse Cabot said. “Now she must be moved.”
    Rose heard the squeaking of wheels, and she saw the hospital groundsman pushing in a wheeled cart. “I’ve not had enough time with her.”
    “There can be no further delay. The coffin is ready in the courtyard. Have arrangements been made for burial?”
    Rose shook her head. Bitterly, she said, “Her husband has arranged for nothing.”
    “If the family is unable to pay, there are options for a respectful interment.”
    A pauper’s burial
was what she meant. Crammed into a common grave with nameless peddlers and beggars and thieves.
    “How much time do I have to make arrangements?” asked Rose.
    Nurse Cabot impatiently glanced up the row of beds, as though considering all the other work she had to do. “By tomorrow noon,” she said, “the wagon will come to pick up the coffin.”
    “So little time?”
    “Decay does not wait.” The nurse turned and gestured to the man who had stood quietly waiting, and he pushed the cart to the bedside.
    “Not yet.
Please.”
Rose pulled at the man’s sleeve, trying to tug him away from Aurnia. “You can’t put her out in the cold!”
    “Please don’t make this difficult,” said the nurse. “If you wish to arrange a private burial, then you’d best see to the arrangements before tomorrow noon, or the city will take her to the South Burying Ground.” She looked at the groundsman. “Remove the deceased.”
    He slid burly arms beneath Aurnia’s body and lifted her from the bed. As he placed the corpse into the handcart, a sob escaped Rose’s throat and she plucked at her sister’s gown, at the skirt, now crusted brown with dried blood. But no cries, no pleading, could alter the course of what would happen next. Aurnia, clothed only in linen and gauze, would be wheeled out into the frigid courtyard, fragile skin bumping against splintery wood as the cart rolled across the cobblestones. Would he be gentle as he placed her into the coffin? Or would he merely roll her in, dropping her like a carcass of meat, letting her head thump against bare pine boards?
    “Let me stay with her,” she pleaded, and reached for the man’s arm. “Let me watch.”
    “Ain’t nothin’ to see, miss.”
    “I want to be sure. I want to know she’s treated right.”
    He gave a shrug. “I treat ’em all right. But you can watch if you want, I don’t care.”
    “There’s another issue,” said Nurse Cabot. “The child. You can’t possibly take adequate care of it, Miss Connolly.”
    The woman in the next bed said: “They came by when you were out, Rose. Someone from the infant asylum, wantin’ to take her. But we wouldn’t allow it. The nerve of those people, tryin’ to make