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down the stairs to the kitchen.
    She found a sewing box on the kitchen mantel and dug through it for scissors. Grabbing handfuls of her hair, Phoebe chopped it short without even bothering to look in a mirror and threw it into the fireplace by the fistful. The embers sparked and sizzled when her damp hair hit them, but Phoebe poked and fanned until it finally burned. The smell made her gag nearly as badly as the baby’s messy diaper had.
    She took a heel of bread left over from supper and a cold baked potato from the larder, figuring she was owed at least that much for a day’s work. Then Phoebe Bigelow ducked through the back door to freedom, disappearing into the night.

Chapter Three
    Philadelphia
October 1861
    “Julia Anne Hoffman! Whatever is the matter with you?” Julia’s mother stood in the bedroom doorway, kid gloves on her hands, hands on her hips.
    “Go without me,” Julia mumbled. “I don’t feel like going.” She stared at the top of her vanity, avoiding her mother’s reflection—and her own—in the mirror.
    “Why not? And don’t try telling me it’s ‘the curse of womanhood’ again. You used that for an excuse last week. And the week before, if I’m not mistaken.”
    Julia didn’t reply. Her silence seemed to make her mother angrier. The older woman stormed into the room, hoops swaying like an unanchored skiff, her Richmond accent growing more pronounced with every word.
    “Look at you. Why, your hair isn’t even fixed. Inga!” she said, turning to shout at Julia’s maid. “Why are you standing around like a dolt? We are supposed to be taking afternoon tea at the Blairs’, and we are already late.”
    “If you please, ma’am …Miss Julia wouldn’t let me comb it.”
    “Julia, I want this silly business of brushing your own hair stopped immediately. Do you hear me?” She picked up the brush with an angry swipe and shoved it into Inga’s hand. The maid carefully began brushing, as if she expected Julia’s hair to fall out in clumps.
    Mrs. Hoffman’s hands returned to her hips as she stood beside the dressing table. “You’ve been moping around for nearly three months—ever since you returned from Washington. I’ve tried very hard to be patient with you because of the shock you received at that battlefield, but honestly, I am all out of patience. I’m absolutely exasperated with you. Your behavior has been downright rude— refusing dinner invitations from perfectly fine gentlemen, walking out on your social obligations. And that insulting remark you made to Mrs. Reed about not fixing the tea herself. I was positively mortified.”
    “But she doesn’t fix it herself, Mother. Neither do I …and neither do you.”
    “Well, of course we don’t. Why should we? That’s what servants are for. Will you please hurry, Inga.”
    “Yes, ma’am. … One more pin, ma’am.”
    Julia reached up to feel the knot of hair coiled at the nape of her neck and fought back tears as she remembered Reverend Greene’s condemning words: They can’t—or won’t—do a thing for themselves, whether it’s combing their own hair or fixing a cup of tea .
    “Inga has made it much too loose,” Julia said. “It will be falling down in half an hour.”
    “Well, it’s your own fault if it does,” her mother replied. “We are leaving this instant. No, put down that brush, Inga. It’s too late to fix it. Fetch Julia’s cloak. And her shoes. She doesn’t even have her shoes on yet. Where’s her bonnet?”
    The maid skittered around like a colt on ice, as if unsure what to do first. “I can fetch my own shoes,” Julia said, rising to cross the room.
    “I don’t know what to do with you,” her mother said with a sigh. “Your father thinks we should send for the doctor.”
    “I don’t need a doctor,” Julia said as she bent to put on her shoes.
    “Then why are you behaving this way?”
    “Because I’m sick of it all, Mother. My life is boring and meaningless. We make social rounds