A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner

was headed for the incinerator.
    There would be no putting that letter back in the trunk where it belonged.
    I sped away with my hand over the book in my pocket, the edges of Lily’s letter crinkling under my fingertips.

Six
    SCARLET fever begins its terrible work before you even know it is inside you. A menacing bacterium, too tiny to see with your eyes, finds its way to you from an avenue of exposure you aren’t even aware of. The minute it is inside, it attacks. That is its only purpose. First you develop a sore throat, the kind that would have you think you’ve swallowed shards of glass. A fever follows, making you feel as if you are being cooked from the inside out. A tremendous headache arrives and by this time you have crawled into your bed and want nothing more than to disappear into sleep and not awaken until the sickness has left, if it indeed leaves. Your body is full of contagion now, and anyone who comes near must cover his or her nose and mouth, in case you cough and spew the sickness into the air he or she breathes. If your caregivers don’t cleanse their hands after having attended you, they will soon have what you have. While you lie there, miserable in your bed, your body produces an angry scarlet rash that starts on your chest and spreads to your arms and legs. The rash is rough to the touch, like a cat’s tongue. About the sixth day, the rash begins to fade and then it will peel like a sunburn. Your tongue blanches white, too, before turning a deep strawberry hue after the white layer sloughs off. This is good news, because it means you will likely survive.
    But if the bacteria invades within the belly of a rocking ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, it runs unfettered like a wild colt, from soul to soul. There is no doctor or nurse to rub your fevered body with carbolized oil or to soak your crimson limbs in a soda bath.
    And if the infection goes deep into your bloodstream—if it finds its way to the very heart of you—you will develop sepsis or meningitis, and if that happens, there is no hope. Only heaven can cure you now.
    The bacteria are so small, so quiet, there is no way to see where they linger. Are they on the clothes of the dead? Are they lurking in the bedcovers? Are they lying in wait in someone’s luggage?
    When the menace claims thirteen lives in the hold of one ship, the answer to those questions is always the same. There is only one way to be sure the disease isn’t preparing to pounce from within the deceased’s belongings and onto the shores of the greeting nation.
    Burn the belongings.
    Burn them all.
    •   •   •
    I could have walked straight to the incinerator with Lily’s book and letter.
    I didn’t think her trunk was truly full of contagion. From Andrew’s numb responses to Mrs. Crowley’s questions, I was certain Lily had died very recently. Perhaps within the last few days. I was also fairly sure her trunk had been secured in the baggage hold with the other steamer trunks when they left Liverpool and before she became ill. And even if she had opened her trunk after having been exposed to the disease, the incubation period had surely passed. The inspectors at Ellis would take no chances, of course, but I was in no danger.
    The book in my pocket was no receptacle of disease.
    As I walked back through the ferry house, I imagined the flames of the incinerator consuming Lily’s letter and turning to ash her appalling confession. If I hadn’t taken the book out of her trunk in the first place, that was exactly what would have become of it.
    Had I not trifled with what wasn’t mine, Andrew Gwynn would have lost forever the opportunity to learn of his bride’s duplicity. He would have lived the rest of his life—however long that was to be—thinking the woman he had married within days of meeting her had loved him, that she had given up all that was familiar to marry him and sail to America because she was in love.
    But now there was an opportunity