Summary

Antonina Rossi continues recounting her time at the Industrial Home for Unwed Mothers in Milford. After Zintka disappears, Antonina is strapped into a straitjacket during a confrontation in the library and realizes the Home’s discipline is meant to break the women’s wills and rewrite what they know about their children. When chaos gives her an opening, she runs, leaving the Home behind without being chased, and the absence of her stolen baby becomes a constant presence in how she moves through the world. Reaching town, she is too afraid to seek help from police or neighbors because the Home’s power relies on local complicity, and she understands that investigations are unpopular precisely because they would expose familiar faces. She holds to one conviction, that her child was born alive and taken from her, even as the institution attempts to twist her...