The Widow's Secret. Sara Mitchell

Jocelyn glanced sideways, she spied a twinkle in her maid’s eyes. “Come now, confess,” she coaxed. “You’ve been wanting to go to town as much as I have. We’ll stop by the bakery, and buy some of those nutmeg doughnuts you love so much.”

      When Katya dug into the folds of her voluminous sack coat for her pad and thick charcoal pencil, Jocelyn almost wept with relief. The further evidence of her crumbling fortitude drained her. Her desperation for any connection with another human being, albeit through the silent scribbling on a notepad, reduced her to a tearful puddle.

      Katya tugged her arm. Their stop had arrived. Jocelyn corralled her gloomy thoughts as they joined the throng of pedestrians spilling across the tracks to the sidewalk. As long as she and Katya stayed together, Sergeant Whitlock counseled her, and confined their meanderings to the busy downtown, they should be safe.

      After they strolled along East Main for several blocks, she relaxed enough to point out a display of ladies’ shoes in the window of a shoe store, even laughed with her companion over a man on a bicycle bumping his way down the cobbled street scarcely a dozen paces ahead of a horsecar. She lingered in front of the bookshop until Katya thrust a piece of paper in front of her face.

      Bakery.

      “Oh, all right.”

      They walked up Sixth Street to Bromm’s Bakery on East Marshall. Several moments later they emerged from the shop, carrying fragrant sacks of confections. A mule-drawn delivery wagon pulled up in front of the bakery and a wiry dark-skinned man jumped down, tying the mule to the hitching post. Katya’s entire face lit up as she pointed to the straw hat on top of the mule’s head, its long ears poking through holes cut on either side. When she indicated that she wanted to go pet the mule, Jocelyn waved her on without a second thought.

      “I’ll wait for you here. I’ve no desire to spoil the fragrance of our doughnuts with eau de mule.”

      Sometimes she forgot how young Katya was, she mused, watching the girl gesturing with her hands to the driver, relieved when he obligingly introduced her to the flop-eared mule.

      How had Katya endured the nightmares in her short life, yet retained the capacity for joy and hope?