A/N: This is a series of chapters on Nadine's life prior to canon. Anyone you recognize belongs to Joseph Moncure March and Michael John LaChiusa, cameo-OC's belong to me. Kindly review

The three of them sat in silence, like a painting lit by firelight. The girl was curled up in her chair with a blanket drawn around her shoulders, light blue dress drawn around her knees A woman knelt beside her, mousy brown waves of hair fading to grey, slowly rubbing her back. The woman's husband stood with his back to them, arms crossed, head bowed as though in sleep. The girl watched the telephone beside her caregivers like a predator, a deadly animal. Tears dried on her face like ice and, periodically, the woman beside her would embrace her and each time, the girl would lay her head against her chest and wait.

She had been with them for a day and a half, after being left alone for three. A police car from Hopewell Junction had brought her to them. No one knew where her parents were.

With a start, the phone rang beside the woman, shattering the composure of the room. The girl let out a cry, strangled it, and fell silent. The woman made a convulsive movement toward it. Her husband closed the space in two strides and picked it up. "Yes," was the only word he uttered. He took up his coat from the hook by the door, and left to brave the night.

"Have they found them?" The child asked the woman. The woman watched her husband go with a pale mask of recognition. She turned to the girl with shaking hands.

"Get some sleep, Sunny," with well-concealed panic she took the girl in hand and gave her a place in her bed.

They were lost, Marie and Anthony both. The doctor was met at the door by a cop who knew the family, whose first words of concern were for the child. He was very young. Having known her all her life he was, nonetheless, old enough to remember Amabel Jeanette, to know the name and to remember the silence that met Marie and Anthony when they learned she, their eldest daughter, had run away. And he feared the silence that would greet their deaths.

The doctor, with a hand on the cop's shoulder, moved him aside. "Let me see them." The cop shook his head.

Sir, I wouldn't dare to hope. He had driven the girl to the doctor in Poughkeepsie, had seen her cry, had held her hand. He had seen her as she'd lived, and he'd feared also that she never would grow up.

He settled his hat on his head as the doctor was called away, and he thought about her sadly for a moment. He knew she would not be able to stay here, though there were people who might have taken her in. Marie had dreamed of reconciliation with her first daughter for years, and her part of her husband's will would be carried out as such, even if it came at Nadine's expense.

The doctor stood behind cold stone and waited, not daring to hope. He was not disappointed. They were lost, both of them, as all had feared and none denied. Lost was the word he would use when he went home to their daughter. Lost implied that they may yet be found. Their daughter had been raised to believe as much.

But he did not return just yet. In the dark he went to his office, and worked deliberately through the files to find her, Jones, but she had married now, hadn't she…? He would have to hope for the best. For the first hour he mourned her mother, and then he mourned her, and then the sister she did not know. And he began making his arrangements.

The girl awoke with a start. She didn't know the time, and it took her a moment in the purple twilight to remember where she was. Roxanne, the doctor's wife, sewing in the window, looked up and held out her hand. Nadine pulled herself up straight, standing on the edge of the bed, arms around her shoulders, self-embracing and wretched. Her face was worried, pale, "I want Ishmael," she said to the woman, eyes glazed over. When Roxanne ushered her back to bed she did not fight her, but lay down and held her head and shook.

It was blessed that the young cop had thought of her in mourning, for he was coming to see them and she had no need to fear of being alone. He came shortly before the doctor returned, early after midnight, and he was welcome, for they had known his parents and treated him. He had a pleasant, small-town manner, he was polite to Roxanne as his teacher, and kind to Nadine as his friend. They had been children together.

He sat down beside her and she laid her head in his lap, wrapping her arms around his waist, "Ishmael." She was grateful. He had been a friend to her, unimportant except in this capacity. But he meant the world to her now.

"No worries, honey, I'm here."

"I know." And she fell asleep, glad of the familiarity. Her parents, years ago, had teased that one day they would marry, that he could protect her. Ishmael, small as he would become in her life, could briefly share her grief. He stroked her hair and promised Roxanne he would come to the wake.

Small comforts in a loved life. She slept more easily.

The church, shadows in pale sandstone. At the child's request, the funeral began at sunrise. She sat on the steps with the doctor and his wife, combing and recombing her hair, straightening and braiding with trembling, fumbling fingers. Thinking of graveyards. Thinking of her grave beside them. "Consider friend, as you pass by…"

Keeping vigil by candlelight, watching the smoke whirl up into the sky. No moon tonight. She'd heard legends of nights like this. Black words and crimson doings… Nothing could be seen of the girl but her black dress and her pale, silent face above the collar of the coat she wore.

The faces would arrive in an hour. Faces from Mother's housewarming parties, Father's piano recitals. Fat and bearing children of their own. Children who knew her, who knew these deaths, more intimately than they cared to acknowledge. Children who did not want to share her premature grief.

These were the mothers who cried for Marie Linda Harding. At her own grave, their children would mourn her. How she hated them. Burying her face in her knees, she kept -whispering, "as you are now, so once was I…"

She held in her sobs, letting out only a whimper, a thin dog's whistle of a cry, drawn tight like the skin of a drum. Dry accusation, guilt. The doctor's wife tilted her head out into the darkness. They spoke quietly, out of respect, it seemed, for the girl's grief. Near to silence, one word, a name, a question, "Amabel?"

Rough and tumble child. Petulant, very nearly pretty, the image of her face came to him as such. There was always a warning in her face. She was destined for a fall. Twenty years had passed since the last warning.

"as I am now, you too shall be…"

He watched an image he had of her as though he viewed a film. She, under a tree in the breeze, covered in her classmate's pilfered makeup, determinedly binding a twisted arm in fabric and setting it. Amabel…their last hope. "She hasn't written back," his wife whispered sadly.

"I suppose we could…" but his wife laid a hand on his arm.

"You're not as young as you once were." A sigh. "Poor devils."

"Poor child. Hardly knew a better family." Even the runaway. He'd always liked Amabel, nearly alone in a largely Catholic town. Given up. She'd come to him for money with her secret, arm carelessly bound, holding her hand to her stomach and whispering "Don't tell mother."

"She'll hear it enough today. Only the tragic news spreads like wildfire in Duchess."

"Prepare therefore…"

"What's she saying over there, a rosary?" Indeed the girl's fingers seemed to move along imaginary beads, imaginary memories. Indeed the words she spoke dealt with the soul of another. The light was fast approaching.

"to follow me…" Nadine started as the doctor's wife took her hand.

"Enough, Sunny. Let's get you inside. There's a good girl, 'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee'…"

"Blessed art thou amongst women, blessed is the fruit of thy womb…"

Amabel, cold limbs in her dress thrown across her husband's, arm around his neck, hair full of powder and sweat. Coming home late, she could not wake him. Eddie's head lay on her chest, and she slept heavily and dreamlessly. Eddie's weight on her heart. Too deeply to take off her pilfered makeup or a costume dress. In sleep the ripped fabric and makeup looked grotesque, far cry from the nearly pretty memory she wanted them to lock away in some attic.

One eye open as her husband shifted. Light in the sky, pulling his arm from under his wife's back. She groaned, rolling over, arms twining around his wrist, latching onto him and kissing halfheartedly. "Where's the fire, stallion, come back to bed…"

"It's almost dawn,"

"Yeah, I heard a rumor six o'clock happens twice a day, I guess it must be true." Eyes heavy and red, she rolled off the crumpled sheets, shaking powder from her hair, drink from her body, makeup from her face, "Where you off to?"

"You know," As close to sharp as he could come. Mae's face twitched. Feeling in the thin white line of her mouth.

"It's barely light in the sky," Eddie's shadow, pulling a shirt from under the bed they shared. He wrapped one arm around his wife's waist, flesh more than bone, ice more than flesh, and she held him and tugged, stretching. "Cancha stay through the night? Cold as hell froze over out there…" She'd pushed this tender moment too far. Eddie pulling away from her, sitting on their bed and pulling on a pair of worn boots. Served him well, cracked leather, soft and sturdy, dark, deep brown. Grey in the feeble light.

"Wish you'd written them back." Cold release, drawing his body from the lukewarm of hers. "We'll be back by dark."

"Dawn to dusk on a train leading nowhere." Mae laughed feebly. She turned. He caught her hand and held her eyes.

"You know we have to do this." Mute nod, fingers curling in, "You coming?"

Turning away. "No. No need for that." No need?

"Where would they be?"

"St. Anne's." she said softly. Eddie let her go, took his coat from the chair by the door, and left without another word, thinking that, at least, she might have ridden with her kin on the train.

Whispers all the way from the train station. In the city, only staring, muttering as he strode away because, perhaps, they feared more than they disdained. But here it was frigid, from the conductor who refused to take his ticket to a stranger on the street, who would not tell him where Mae's sister could be found.

The doctor and his wife stood with the child at the door of the church, shaking hands. The child stood solemn, blue eyes vacant from her tears. When those she barely knew shook her for her grief she went limp in their arms like a doll. Yes, she knew what fine people they were… Yes, she knew her own memories. Heeding the sun in the east, her mourning was drawing back. Lovely flowers, lovely lilies for the headstones… One moment of joy when Ishmael took her hand and knew how she would cry when she was alone. She kissed him fleetingly on the cheek and hoped she would see him again…

Then a flash of time, two broken ends of the day… Nadine was kneeling, dirt on her torn, black stockings, pulling the petals in a frenzy from each of the white lilies, dropping the petals onto the coffins, slid closed over their faces while she slept. Her hands bled against the ground. "Prepare, therefore, to follow me…" How she wished it… how she wished it… counting seconds.

"That her?"

"More or less." A moment's hesitation, "If I could…your name?"

"Eddie Mackrel. Mae Jones is my wife. She'd 've come herself but…"

"No need."

From her place at the grave, she'd started to scream. The doctor and the man beside him went to her, Eddie kneeling heavily and taking the sides of her face in his hands. The doctor took from her shaking fingers the torn remnants of those white lilies. The girl put her hands to her face to hold in the perfume. All the while the guests at the wake stared at the shade with the girl's head in his hands, a girl he must love by obligation. And though he had to ask for her name, once he heard it he said it softly, and said it often. When she heard it she would think of those hands, holding her together as the world around her flew apart.

"You'll take her now?" the doctor registered the girl's quiet, held firmly in a stranger's hands. Eddie nodded.

"Promised to be home by dark." Her screams had ceased. She trembled only, putting to her lips the fragments of lily the doctor hadn't managed to take away. Dr. Dorsett rose from the grave, and went to Roxanne. His wife's face had hardened around the lines of her mouth. Her words reached out like the lash of a whip.

"Send him away."

"We've no choice."

"We'll keep the girl."

"Roxanne. We'll follow her parents' will. She'll go to her sister."

She turned to look at him for the first time. "What makes you believe she's changed?"

"The love and faith of her mother, I suppose. You knew Marie as well as I. The closest to God's faith on earth we found in Marie."

"A mother's love can be blind."

"Blind to fault, perhaps. Not blind to virtue. Nor to hope." His wife turned away. "Go to her, then. Make her promise to write. Hold her to that promise." She shook her head.

"You bring her here. I'll have her make no promise while he listens."

Heavy steps, back to where the girl was looking into his face. Reaching up…

"Stand by the gate now," the doctor said this over her head, "I'll have her along in a minute. Nadine, honey, Roxanne wants to tell you good-bye."

"Yes, sir."