Edith took the hand of the African as he escorted her into the carriage. Inside was a white male wearing a bowler hat and trench, sporting a long cane. He appeared well-to-do and polite.

"Your name again, sir?" Edith asked.

"Lawrence," he replied with an American accent and kind eyes. Edith nodded and took a seat. She heard the African whip the horse to a trot and off they went. To where? She did not yet know. Edith had not thought out her plan beyond stepping off the boat upon her arrival in England.

There was a time Edith thought she should check herself into an asylum.

Edith played off the persistent compulsions as meaningless, yet invasive, thoughts. The soft voices heard whispering in her ear were just imaginings. But sometimes she could feel the moisture from their breath on her neck. Like something was there.

Then, the dreams.

First, they were silly nightmares that, over time, turned into night terrors. Other times she would shake, Alan throttling her shoulders until she woke. But they are just dreams, she thought.

The last straw happened two weeks ago. Edith, blissful under layers of heavy blankets, slept during a chilly Buffalo fall night. As she came to, her knees ached from kneeling on the bathroom tile and water splashed on her forearms. She remembered a person shoving her to the side and the object in her hands wrenched from her grasp. The realization of her actions hit her when she saw Alan standing with a shrieking child in his arms.Their child. Wilhelmina.

"What are you doing?" Alan yelled.

"I don't know! I don't know!" Edith cried, still confused.

"Were you trying to drown our daughter?"

"No, no! I would never … "

But she just had.