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I couldn’t even go back to teaching if I wanted to; the school committee had engaged someone else in my absence.

The trees were bare, the limbs like splayed fingers against the vivid blue sky. It was so quiet, just a few birds rustling in evergreens, a far-off echo of an ax chopping wood. How loud my life on the Mississippi had been! Never was there complete quiet on the steamboat; there was always someone singing a song, laughing at a joke, telling a story. The steady hum of the engines, the constant swish of the river’s currents—all had filled my ears for so long that I found the quiet of home jarring. My nerves thrummed in anticipation for some unexpected, unpredictable noise or diversion.

I wandered along the lane, which was crisscrossed with the occasional cow path leading off toward other farms, watching out for the deep wagon ruts, so much trouble for one my size. Too soon did I reach town, where the streets were sparsely populated by people who no longer knew how to think about me.

Since coming home, I had realized that when the school committee appointed me as a schoolteacher years earlier, it wasn’t entirely for my welfare. Giving me a title, a job, gave the town a way to look at me that was easy; it meant that they did not have to think about my size, first thing, each time they encountered me. Miss Bump, the teacher, was a much easier thing to consider than Miss Bump, that poor little woman. But I had angered them by rejecting their neat package and leaving to go out west. I had shocked them by performing on a boat. Now I was gazed at, whispered about, more pointedly than I ever had been out west, even when I had paraded around with Sylvia.

Mrs. Putnam, the minister’s wife, stopped to observe me as she exited the dry goods store.

“Good morning,” I called out pleasantly.

“Oh!” She looked around to see if there was anyone observing us; there was, but she was trapped. “Well, good morning, Miss Bump.” She sniffed and looked down her long nose at me. “What a surprise to see you out and about this early.”

“A surprise? Why is that?” I smiled up at her; her bonnet was as plain and red as her face. The people of Middleborough looked so ordinary to me now. She could use some of Carlotta’s paint, I thought wickedly, stifling a giggle.

“Why, I’m sure I don’t know, I just supposed that you were used to sleeping late back on that showboat of yours. It’s a mercy to see you up at a good Christian hour.”

“But I saw many a sunrise out west,” I protested with a sweet, pious smile.

“You did?”

“Of course! Many a sunrise I saw as I came home after a late night of carousing and unseemly behavior!”

“Why, Lavinia Bump! I never—the wickedness! The shame!” The old woman sputtered and hissed like a cat in heat as she hurried off to be swallowed up by a small band of other church-women, all of whom muttered and looked over their shoulders at me.

I tilted my chin and met their collective gaze evenly; they looked away, still buzzing with disapproval. I didn’t care. I was even a bit tickled by my impertinence, although I did hope it wouldn’t cause Papa or Mama any grief later. But my spirits were lightened, as well as my step, and soon I was at the post office. It was located at the main intersection of the town, called the Four Corners; the streets that comprised this area housed most of the commerce of the village—dry goods stores, a millinery, lawyer and physician offices, the building where workers toiled at the large shoe manufacturer. Middleborough wasn’t a small town, not by New England standards. Yet after the dirty, humid, colorful excitement that was New Orleans or St. Louis, it was so staid and sleepy to me, all the same. Everything here was so stolid; nothing ever changed. Certainly we had no streets dedicated solely to vice!

I knocked politely on the post office door; the handle was too high and heavy for me to reach. Mr. Jones, the clerk, opened the door, peered out over my head for a moment, then looked down. He smiled