Summary

Chapter 14 occurs in Eliza’s perspective in 1916, following Henry’s death. Herself and Caroline prepare for their trip as a seamstress sews them mourning clothes. Eliza’s mother Caroline gifts her the locket she’d worn in memory of Eliza’s father. She suggests that Eliza consume herself with charity work as “‘a cure for her grief’” (140). Eliza disregards this as she lies in bed, “numb with grief,” then she cuts a photo of Henry to place in the locket beside the picture of her father (140).

Eliza reads a letter from Sofya, who is yet unaware of Henry’s death. Eliza thinks, “how strange she didn’t even know he’d died. I had written her about it. Were my letters still being received?” (141). As Eliza had “so aptly predicted, the situation deteriorates” in Russia, and Sofya’s family prepares to leave by...