Frederika Reichman stood before the bay window looking over the snow-covered treetops and beyond to Lake Lawrence. An early storm surprised them, layering the city in ice and wreaking havoc with the tenuous lines of communication down the coast. Two days of heavy snow followed, marooning them all on the islands at the Inn, Whitefish, and in the ever-expanding settlement at Summerland, where her husband Augustus now sat stranded.

And it was amid this chaos and confusion, this moment that threatened still-fragile state with collapse at the onset of winter, that her youngest daughter Delia chose to disappear.

Delia had always been difficult, with her vinegar disposition and rebelliousness. Ungrateful from the womb, unrepentant that her mother nearly sacrificed her own life in birthing her. Resentful of the family's wealth and position, as if they fought so hard and made so many sacrifices in their rise to the top in order to irritate her, or to provide fodder for her lectures on matters of grace and charity.

And now she was gone.

When the servants said they couldn't find the girl, Frederika dismissed their concerns. She always turned up somewhere, usually emerging from some cobwebby corner of the library, half-starved and spouting ideas from whatever tome she'd been poring over. Frederika stopped being worried after the second time it happened. She had instructed the servants scrounge up some food and put Delia to bed.

Though when an officer came to report that Delia had been declared missing, Frederika's oldest fears flooded back. Her first thought was that she had been abducted but the sergeant said they had found no evidence of forced entry. Still, the newly fallen snow would cover any tracks. All they knew for sure was that, after three comprehensive sweeps of the Inn, she was either no longer there or very well hidden.

That's when Frederika's worry curdled into anger. The armed guards manned every gate preventing any outside threats. Who would want to escape from their sanctuary into the untamed wilds of the city? No one in her right mind, Frederika thought.

After she ordered the guards to inspect the grounds one final time, the sergeant noted that there two places inside the garden--a bench and a statue--where an athletic person might leap and pull themselves over the wall.

"She wanted to see the streets so badly," Frederika had said to the man, her breath steaming in the frigid air, "Looks like she got her wish."

She and her husband had tried to show the girl the reality. Frederika had even arranged for a tour of the new penitentiary so she could get a whiff of the filth that she romanticized reading from the warm safety of her canopied bed, but the scavengers' patchwork scars, foul stench, and rotting teeth only seemed to galvanize her will. Delia had bided her time and, at the first opportunity, broke away knowing she wouldn't be followed.

In that moment of blind fury Frederika thought, Good riddance to the ingrate.

Now, after two cups of hot chocolate spiked with Irish whiskey, Frederika's heart had softened somewhat. Darkness descended by mid-afternoon these short winter days and the temperature dropped precipitously once the sun vanished. The Inn's servants had a hard enough time keeping the sleeping quarters warm, having to stoke the fireplaces throughout the frigid night. Frederika had no idea how the street people survived. The idea of some vermin using her daughter, her flesh and blood, to warm his fetid sleeping pad revolted her to such a degree that she'd rather have Delia be dead rather than to suffer such indignity.

Frederika sent a servant away with her cup only half-empty and told the girl to prepare her quarters. The alcohol had made her temples throb and she'd grown drowsy. Hopefully sleep would take her quickly from the gloomy emptiness of her bed. She watched as the first fat snowflakes began to fall and let out a deep, heavy sigh.

After the worry and anger passed, she still hadn't found the energy to cry.