a maid held out a hand for Ester’s cloak. As Ester gave it over, her own work-roughened hand brushed the maid’s, and Ester looked up into the blunt fatigue on the maid’s doughy face. Swiftly, before pity could overtake her, Ester turned away. To feel guilt over her own escape would drown her. She’d found a spar of wood to cling to, a thin chance at life; she couldn’t falter at the sight of yet another drowning stranger.
