The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

spirit grocery, she changed into a plain green costume. She couldn’t bear to stay in, not for a moment; she’d spent half the day shut up already.
    Downstairs, two men were carrying an unmistakeable shape out of a passage. Lib recoiled.
    â€œBeg your pardon, Mrs. Wright,” said Maggie Ryan, “they’ll have him out of your way in two ticks.”
    Lib watched the men steer the unvarnished coffin around the counter.
    â€œMy father’s the undertaker too,” the girl explained, “on account of having the couple of gigs for hire.”
    So the carriage outside the window stood in for a hearse as needed. Ryan’s combination of trades struck Lib as unsavoury. “A quiet place, this.”
    Maggie nodded as the door swung shut behind the coffin. “There used to be twice as many of us before the bad time.”
    Us,
meaning the people in this village or in the county? Or the whole of Ireland, perhaps? The
bad time,
Lib assumed, was that terrible failure of the potato ten or fifteen years back. She tried to call up the details. All she could generally remember of old news was a flicker of headlines in grim type. When she was young, she’d never really studied the paper, only glanced at it. Folded the
Times
and laid it beside Wright’s plate, every morning, the year she’d been his wife.
    She thought of the beggars. “On the drive here I saw many women alone with their children,” she mentioned to Maggie Ryan.
    â€œAh, lots of the men are gone for the season, just, harvesting over your way,” said Maggie.
    Lib took her to mean England.
    â€œBut the most part of the young folk do have their hearts set on America, and then there’s no coming home.” She jerked her chin, as if to say good riddance to those
young folk
who weren’t anchored to this spot.
    Judging from her face, Lib thought Maggie herself couldn’t have been more than twenty. “You wouldn’t consider it?”
    â€œSure there’s no hearth like your own, as they say.” Her tone more resigned than fond.
    Lib asked her for directions to Dr. McBrearty’s.
    His house was a substantial one at the end of a lane, some way out on the Athlone road. A maid as decrepit as her master showed Lib into the study. McBrearty whipped off his octagonal glasses as he stood up.
    Vanity? she wondered. Did he fancy he looked younger without them?
    â€œGood afternoon, Mrs. Wright. How are you?”
    Irked,
Lib thought of saying.
Frustrated. Thwarted on all sides.
    â€œAnything of an urgent nature to report?” he asked as they sat.
    â€œUrgent? Not exactly.”
    â€œNo hint of fraud, then?”
    â€œNo positive evidence,” Lib corrected him. “But I thought you might have visited your patient to see for yourself.”
    His sunken cheeks flushed. “Oh, I assure you, little Anna’s on my mind at all hours. In fact, I’m so very concerned for the watch that I’ve thought it best to absent myself so it can’t be insinuated afterwards that I exerted any influence over your findings.”
    Lib let out a small sigh. McBrearty still seemed to be assuming that the watch would prove the little girl a modern-day miracle. “I’m concerned that Anna’s temperature seems low, especially in her extremities.”
    â€œInteresting.” McBrearty rubbed his chin.
    â€œHer skin’s not good,” Lib went on, “nor her nails, nor her hair.” This sounded like petty stuff from a magazine of beauty. “And there’s a downy fuzz growing all over her. But what worries me most is the swelling in her legs—her face and hands, too, but the lower legs are the worst. She’s resorted to wearing her brother’s old boots.”
    â€œMm, yes, Anna’s been dropsical for some time. However, she doesn’t complain of pain.”
    â€œWell. She doesn’t complain at all.”
    The doctor nodded as if that reassured