House of Salt and Sorrows

Annaleigh returns from shopping and notices wet footprints from an open bathroom. She smells the same scents that her deceased sister, Elizabeth, used for baths and assumes someone found a forgotten bottle. She follows the wet footprints to Verity’s room, teasing her for not toweling off. However, Verity is busy drawing and completely dry; she states Elizabeth is the culprit. The wet footprints lead to Elizabeth’s old room. Annaleigh enters the room, but no one is there.

Fearful, Verity says Elizabeth sometimes visits Octavia on the fourth floor. Annaleigh pushes her to explain, and she says she sees their deceased sisters. Annaleigh reiterates that they’re all deceased, but Verity shows her drawings—which depict Ava, Octavia, Elizabeth, and Eulalie with their respective injuries. Verity was only two years old when Ava died, so Annaleigh knows she would never remember her visage. She is disturbed, and Verity says she now knows to look for their sisters too.

Annaleigh explains Verity’s drawings to Hanna, who is busy preparing for the triplets’ 16th birthday ball with the other servants. Hanna assumes Verity’s imagination is vivid. Annaleigh brings up Verity’s youth, the impossibility of her knowing her deceased sisters’ visages. Hanna urges her to get ready, promising to discuss Verity later. Last night, when Annaleigh told Camille about Verity, she didn’t believe her either.

Camille pushes Annaleigh to take a bath before the ball, intent they will find suitors. Annaleigh is reluctant to bathe in the tub where Elizabeth drowned. She tenses when the water turns black, a force pushes her under, and octopuses grapple her. She wakes from her nightmare to Camille hurrying her. Toweling off, Annaleigh notices scratches on her back. Camille assures her that she scrubbed too hard, but Annaleigh insists she didn’t. When Camille pulls the tub’s plug, Annaleigh sees Elizabeth’s ghost bubbling from the water, reaching for them. Annaleigh flinches but keeps the vision to herself. In her room, she realizes her scratches are bruises, as if Elizabeth poked her to get her attention.

At the triplets’ birthday ball, fog stops some guests from attending, but Highmoor Manor echoes with life. Ortun, Morella, Camille, Annaleigh, and the triplets greet guests, and Annaleigh’s friend Fisher (Hanna’s son and apprentice to the lighthouse keeper) arrives among them. He hugs Annaleigh and teases her about her growth into a lovely lady; she and Camille used to be infatuated with Fisher but now treat him as a brother. He calls Annaleigh “Minnow” and signs her dance card. They catch up and talk about his time at the lighthouse.

After dinner, Annaleigh dances with her uncle, a distant cousin, and Fisher; others don’t sign her and her sisters’ dance cards as expected. Mercy and Lenore are upset, as is Camille, who tries to talk to Robin Briord, a lord she likes—but he keeps ignoring her. After chasing Robin, Camille rushes to Annaleigh, pulling her outside into the foggy garden.

Camille rants about Robin framing the Thaumas sisters as poison. She blames the family’s curse, regardless of its reality. She and Annaleigh dream about traveling to other lands, where no one knows of the curse. Suddenly, Annaleigh sees Eulalie walking toward them in the fog, hearing her laugh. She asks if Camille sees the ghost, but she doesn’t, dismissing Annaleigh as inebriated.

Annaleigh has trouble sleeping after the guests leave. She looks at Eulalie’s pocket watch and Edgar’s lock of hair. She wonders why Eulalie would keep his hair if she rejected him. Annaleigh plans to explain her theory to her father and ask for help.

At breakfast, Annaleigh reiterates that the family’s curse isn’t real. Camille argues that regardless of the curse’s reality, their guests judged them, so the sisters will end up spinsters. Morella enters, asking if her unborn son will be cursed too. Ortun consoles her out of the room. The oldest sisters argue about the curse and being kind to Morella, whose pregnancy has proven painful. Ortun returns and warns his daughters to stop discussing the curse, as it doesn’t exist. He is leaving for capital meetings for a week, trusting them to take care of Morella. Afterward, Fisher asks Annaleigh if she’d like to go fishing and search for kelp (for Morella’s lotions, to ease her pain); they leave.

Annaleigh and Fisher take a rowboat to an island for kelp collecting, watching sea turtles, Annaleigh’s favorite animal, in the waves. She admits she walked in on a fight between Camille and their father, so she didn’t get to discuss something important with him. Fisher prompts her to confide in him, and she shares her theory regarding Eulalie’s murder. Fisher is empathetic, and Annaleigh cries. As he holds her, she feels romantic feelings bloom.

Annaleigh then asks Fisher if he believes in ghosts. She explains Verity’s drawings and confesses to seeing her sisters’ ghosts. Fisher believes Annaleigh and Verity aren’t seeing ghosts, but rather reflections of their grief. They finally reach their destination, collecting kelp as they talk. Annaleigh mentions the family’s curse, and Fisher wonders if they could travel somewhere new, where no one knows of the curse. He mentions hypothetical doors to the gods, which the gods use to reach the mortal world, including faraway lands. Annaleigh is intrigued, but Fisher brushes the doors off as a fairy tale.