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“That isn’t how it works,” she mumbled. “Thank you for the stew meat. We’ll pray for you during Grace tonight.” Why did she even say that? What purpose did lying about Grace serve? How was she becoming an even worse person so rapidly?

“Oh, are you on your way?” His delight, bewilderingly, was only growing. “I was just about to grab some lunch from my favorite stall. Would you like to join me?”

Maggie, whose desperation to escape this fever dream of a butcher shop visit was reaching its peak, shook her head. “Thank you but no, I need to return home and start dinner for my brothers.”

“Well, Magdalene, you know where to find me if you change your mind. What will you be doing with the studio, if you don’t mind me asking?”

An excellent question Maggie would love to know the answer to. “My brothers are still trying to iron out the final details of that. I’m sure I’ll see you around town, and thank you again.” Spinning around, Maggie nearly flung herself out of the shop, jerking the heat-swollen door open and launching herself out.

As she stumbled down the walkway back to the street, she thought she heard a bark of laughter behind her. It wasn’t until later, when she had returned to the sparse, dark apartment, that she realized he had called her by her first name.

Emmy’s face was serious—almost angry, her brows scrunched together and her mouth set in a firm line—as she leaned forward and carefully, carefully, tried to snatch the fork from the table.

Theo skittered the chair back, hoisting her closer to his body as she released an indignant grunt. “No, sweet, you’ll poke your eye out.”

She turned and looked up at her father, her brown eyes wide and welling with tears while her tiny lower lip jutted out. She was perched safely on his lap, which put her in both her favorite spot (her papa’s knee, which made an excellent horse ride) and within tantalizing reach of the forbidden silverware. Theo responded to her very real rage by kissing her cheek, then blowing a raspberry onto it. She squealed, wriggling around in delight, until Louise stuck her head out of the kitchen door, glaring.

“Don’t get her all riled up, Theo; we’re already eating later than we should, so heaven knows it will be a task to get her to sleep.” His sister’s face, usually quite pretty, was soured in annoyance; her dark brows were low on her forehead, her nearly black hair coming loose from its trappings atop her head. There was sweat making its way down her cheek, illuminating her already rosy skin, and she wiped at her nose with irritation.

“She’ll tire out,” Theo said, kissing his daughter’s forehead and giving his sister a playful grin. “I’ll do bedtime; don’t fuss.”

“Don’t fuss,” she muttered, turning back to the roast she was tending. “Don’t fuss, he says. Cheeky.”

David, Theo’s older brother, opened the oven door, plucked out a loaf of dark bread, and plopped it on the counter to cool. His wife, Laura, was visiting her family in Iowa, and he insisted on spending his lonely nights with his siblings instead of wandering around his empty house. “Quite the spread, Lou,” he said. “Thanks so much.” She scoffed in response; while David, Theo, and their youngest brother Jacob were similar in their warm humor and quick wit, Louise took after their parents, unflappable and pragmatic. She came off as cold at first acquaintance and thawed into lukewarm indifference at best.

Aside from when she was with Emmy.

Pickpocket Emmy, withdrawing smiles from the tightest of purses without them even noticing. Louise, Theo knew, would die for her niece.

Jacob strolled in, bundling up a small pile of laundry and tossing it into a corner. “I’ll do those up tomorrow, Lou, so don’t worry about them.” Easing into a chair that whined under his considerable weight—he had begun to box recently and, aside from frequent fat lips and black eyes, he was packing on muscle like a prize hog—he silently reached out to Theo, who handed a delighted Emmy over to him.

“Unc! Unc!” She clapped her uncle’s cheeks between both hands, and he made the required rude noise.

“Don’t you start!” Lou called from the kitchen. “She napped too long today, and now we’ll all have to pay!”

David shuffled in, dumping the still-steaming bread onto the table and winking at Theo. “She’s in a snit today,” he told his brothers in a low voice. “Mrs. Marsden told her that they can’t afford to be hiring anyone for mending and washing anymore.” He rolled his neck out with a hmmm of pleasure at the sounds of the bones cracking. His mouth was bracketed by deep lines, evidence of a lifetime of worriment, and his eyes—the family’s signature blue—were deep-set and tired. He was a tall man, taller than Theo by at least two inches, but they were both dwarfed by Jake.

“Mr. Marsden’s got a good business,” Theo pointed out as Jake continued to assail Emmy with tummy tickles. “Strange they’d suddenly be in straits.”

All three brothers turned to the pile of their clothes patiently awaiting Lou’s mending. Her stitches usually were crooked and weak; she insisted she only needed the thinnest of threads, which was cheaper, and the result was a repaired shirt that only stayed whole for a month or so before the seams burst again. None of them had the heart to tell her she was lacking in the department, which was proving to have been a mistake. Their shop was the most popular in the village and took in tidy profits every week, so her income wasn’t necessarily required, but Louise insisted on helping provide for the family. Theo had felt a bit bad about humoring her, but that tended to be much easier than handling her anger, something all the brothers avoided when possible.

She strode in, setting the roast on the table with a thud. “Help yourselves, heathens,” she quipped, dropping herself into her designated chair. David reached across the table to carefully carve the meat and transfer portions to his siblings’ plates.

“How was everyone’s day?” Louise asked, hacking into the bread and smothering her slice in butter.

“Slaughtered at least seventy of Hawk’s chickens today,” Jake said with a smile, balancing his niece on his knee while he shoveled a forkful of meat into his mouth. He handed Emmy a small slice, watching as she chewed on it. “I don’t know what he’s feeding them, but I’ve never seen birds so big. Good thing we pay per carcass and not by the pound, or we’d be out of business.”

He typically handled the transportation side of the business and only helped with the actual butchering of the animals during the busy season. David was in charge of the bloody day-to-day operations at their warehouse a mile out of town, and Theo ran the shop itself. He was, they all agreed, the most personable of the group and best able to serve customers and soothe irritated vendors. Their sister had, for a brief and horrifying moment, offered to fill the role, and had to be talked down gently to avoid a catastrophic argument.

“I’ll thank you to keep the word ‘carcass’ to a minimum while we’re eating,” Lou said. Theo longed to point out that they were currently eating a carcass but was cut off when she rose from her chair and disappeared into the kitchen again. She returned with four glasses dangling from her fingers and a bottle of wine. “Would anyone indulge?”

The three men (and Emmy, with Jake’s help) raised their hands. Lou handed the glasses out and filled them with the murky vintage. “The finest wine in Roslyn.” She saluted her brothers.

Theo sopped up some of the roast’s juices with the bread and popped it in his mouth, chewing quickly. “Glad you asked about our days, Lou,” he said, holding his arms out for his daughter. Jake gave his niece one last kiss and handed her to her father. “Something interesting happened at the shop.” Emmy, seeing the opportunity of her father being distracted, made a grab for the wine in his hand, and he jerked the glass back, sloshing the wine onto his shirt. The little one squealed with glee.

“What a gorgeous demon she’s turning into.” David grinned, reaching over and tweaking her nose. Theo handed her the rest of his bread and sighed as she tore into it like a rabid badger.

“What happened?” Jake asked, nodding at Theo.