Wolthrope’s streets pulsed with the cmor of hooves and hawkers as Eleanor ventured forth, her shawl drawn tight against the fog that clung like a shroud. James’s death had stripped their rder bare, and the pawnshop had taken his crutch for a pittance—sixpence, cold in her palm. She’d heard of the relief agency, a squat brick building by the river, its doors open to the destitute. With Eldric’s thin face in her mind and her parents’ murmurs haunting her ears, she steeled herself and stepped inside, the reek of unwashed bodies and wet wool assailing her.

  A clerk, his spectacles fogged, thrust a ledger at her. “Name?” he barked, quill poised. “Eleanor Harrington,” she replied, her voice steady despite the quiver in her chest. He grunted, assigning her to dole out broth and bread—three shillings a week, a lifeline snatched from ruin. She tied an apron over her patched dress, its hem frayed from nights of scrubbing, and faced the queue: gaunt mothers, hollow-eyed men, children with sores blooming on their skin. Each spoon she dled was a mirror to her own want, and she felt James’s ghost in their stooped shoulders.

  That night, she trudged home, the river’s dank breath on her neck, and found Eldric by the hearth, his wooden horse idle. “What’d you do, Mama?” he asked, his hazel eyes—James’s eyes—alight with wonder. She sank beside him, the candle’s fme a weak pulse, and spun tales of the agency—of a widow she’d fed, a boy she’d wrapped in a rag. “They’re like us,” she said, her smile faint, and he beamed, clutching her hand. Margaret rocked nearby, humming tunelessly, and Henry’s stare pierced the dark, unseeing.

  In her breast, a spark fred—not joy, but purpose, bitter-edged. She could not save James, but these hands might yet hold others from the abyss. Yet beneath it, fear gnawed: how long could she bear this weight before it crushed her?