* * * * * * * * * * *

“She’s here to identify you.”

I rose from my crouch and leaned against the cool metal bars of my cell.

“Who is?”

“Miss Callistine, the woman who you claim is your sister.”

I gulped rapidly.

The woman who walked in stiffly resembled Carissa from the soft wave of her hair to the small rounded nose. Her eyes were full of fear, that is until she saw me and the fear was replaced by grief. Her knees buckled, leaving her tumbling to the gravel floor. She wailed and clutched at her stomach for a time.

I wanted the tears to stop, the wailing to end. But then it did, and I wished it hadn’t because in place of grief their was rage. She leapt off the gravel and brushed off her dress with such force that pebbles were flung into my cell, bouncing off the bars. She grasped those bars in such a way that I had the impression the flexing fingers would have been circling my throat were I not safely behind them. She glared at me, her nostrils flaring like a bull enticed by the matador. Her spit struck me on the cheek but was washed away by my tears that had long ago streaked black lines of makeup down to my chin.

“Murderer,” she snarled, “MURDERER!” she repeated the wretched word so loudly that my heart seemed to beat to the sound of her voice. With each syllable a firework in my chest went off, it’s effect rippling to the protruding vain on my forehead.

“I didn’t kill her! She died at childbirth, her body was so tired…” I gasped for breath, failing to control my sobs. “The triplets were too much…”

“Liar!” her accusing voice was penetrating my feeble defenses and guilt began to eat away at my intestines. I had not killed her, not in the horrible way she imagined. But I was partially responsible because I WAS a liar. I had told Carissa that I was a midwife, and I wasn’t. Maybe a proper midwife would have been able to save her, maybe she would have lived if I had not lied. I fought the guilt and forced my lower lip to stop trembling. She had been planning on traveling alone, without me the children might have died. The children! It had been days since I’d seen the girls, and I desperately prayed they were being cared for.