Hester

Abigail visits Isobel, lamenting that Mrs. Adams’s shop feels terrible without her. She reveals she has long known about Isobel’s pregnancy. She admires Isobel’s work and insists she attend the Hamilton Hall banquet, choosing one of Darling’s silks for a gown. Abigail advises Isobel to reveal her child as Edward’s at the banquet, claiming the story is more important than truth, lest she be exiled.

Isobel attends the banquet despite her nerves. She wears a veil, pinned using the buttons she bought during an early encounter with Nat. She stands with Nell and her husband, Stephen, and watches for Nat, who looks uneasy. When Isobel finally enters, she hears two men gossiping about Edward, whom they believe will never return to Salem after reneging on his debts. The conversation turns to Darling, as the men posit he is pursuing a woman, as he is buying a smaller boat. Isobel is surprised at her jealousy. She heads outside for air, where she sees a man whose silhouette reminds her of Edward. She tells Nell that she is pregnant, and that Edward is the father; Nell and the Silas women already know of the pregnancy, and Nell pretends to believe Edward is the father.

Later, Nat goes to Isobel’s house, but she doesn’t let him in. He offers to send her to a friend in Maine for the remainder of her pregnancy, but insists he would die if he gave up everything to stay with her. She tells him to go away, that the child is Edward’s. Nat ignores this, telling Isobel to wait by a sycamore tree in a week, where he will have a carriage waiting.

Margaret knows she is dying. She advises Isobel to make a dress ringed with irises, a symbol of faeries, to promote courage and wisdom. Later that night, she prays with a rosary.

Isobel weighs her choices: If she goes to Maine, Nat might come to love her and their child, and if she stays in Salem, Darling might help her secure business. However, if she stays and Edward returns, she will be at his mercy. Isobel reconsiders selling the Garden of Eden shawl and starting over somewhere new. Several days later, the undertaker arrives and reports that Nell died of fever. Isobel makes her friend a beautiful shroud from one of her silks.

Two days before Nat’s carriage is due to arrive, an unkempt man steps into Isobel’s yard: It’s Edward, nearly unrecognizable with dirt. He asks about her pregnancy, then strikes her when she won’t reveal her lover. He asserts he didn’t refuse to board Darling’s ship, but rather Darling had him arrested when he discovered the captain and his first mate, Ingo, working as slave catchers. Edward produces a notice that seeks an escaped man and boy; the latter’s description matches Abraham. Edward reveals Ivy and Abraham are the enslaved children of a Scottish enslaver named MacGreggor, and that Mercy fled MacGreggor’s plantation five years ago while pregnant. Isobel fears she misjudged Darling as well as Edward and Nat. Edward intends to return Mercy’s family to MacGreggor.

Isobel, cautious of her pregnancy, pretends to help Edward. She says she will lure Mercy by asking for help with stitching, but secretly sews the word “RUN” into Nell’s shroud. Mercy promises to visit Isobel soon, and Isobel and Edward return to her cottage, where he threatens her. Edward grows impatient and ties Isobel to a table while he goes out to investigate. He leaves, and she cries out for help. Eventually, the undertaker’s wife, Eveline, arrives and unties her. Eveline runs to retrieve her husband’s cart, as Isobel is too far into her pregnancy to run, but Edward returns before she does. He beats Isobel, and she stabs him in the eye with a needle hidden it in her pocket.

As Edward screams, Isobel follows the voices of several women who have come to her aid, as well as Zeke and the undertaker. She hides in the back of the undertaker’s cart, spending hours crouched under a blanket as they flee. She falls into a stupor, listening for her mother’s voice and worrying for her child, who hasn’t moved since Edward injured her. Zeke hides Isobel in the sugar house. Inside, Mercy waits and Ivy sleeps. Mercy gently strokes Isobel’s stomach and explains that while MacGreggor is Ivy and Abraham’s father, she is not their biological mother. The mother, Ida, fled MacGreggor when Mr. Remond encountered her in Boston and informed her that she was legally free in Massachusetts. She found her way to Salem and died giving birth to Ivy. When slave catchers came looking for Abraham, Darling took him to Canada. Mercy advises Isobel to flee, as she will be punished for her illegitimate pregnancy and stabbing Edward. Isobel senses the word “love” from Mercy. Later, she wakes to her child moving again. She resolves to no longer be held back by her past.

In the morning, Isobel tells Mercy that she saw “magic” in her work from their first encounter. Mercy denies having magic and explains they will use a shroud to help Ivy escape Salem, which she, Zeke, and Darling have been doing for years, along with other allies, including the undertaker and Widow Higgins. They laugh over Edward’s belief that Darling is aiding slave catchers. Mercy explains the story of how the sugar house became a safe haven for those fleeing slavery. Isobel makes a dress for Ivy and a matching one for her doll. Widow Higgins arrives, reports Nell’s burial, and delivers colorful threads from Darling—used to stitch designs on burlap sacks that will help enslaved people. Isobel thinks of Nat’s carriage, due to arrive that day, and thinks of how alone she would have been, had she taken it.

Isobel stays in the sugar house all winter, sewing. By the time her daughter is born, she has stitched enough to open her own shop. Darling visits and praises baby Margaret, named after Isobel’s mother, and offers to marry Isobel and raise the child as his own. He reports that Edward was blinded by her attack and now lives at an almshouse in Boston. Isobel sets sail with Darling on the New Harmony, feeling safe with a man for the first time since her father. As the ship leaves Salem harbor, she sees Nat standing on the shore. She holds Margaret high so he can see her. The ship heads north, and Isobel returns to her cabin.

Nat, who now goes by Nathaniel Hawthorne, works on the final chapter of his novel. His wife, Sophia, puts their children to bed, then listens to him read the story of Hester Prynne. Sophia cries, knowing the story is about Nathaniel and a woman who is not her. She spends three days confined to her bed with a migraine, then rises and reads her husband’s old journals. When she hears him return with their children, she casts the journals into a fire.

In Halifax Bay, Isobel takes the name Isobel McAllister and pretends to be a widow saved from starvation by Darling. She opens a dress shop called Lighthouse Dress Shop and stitches a banner of a red-and-white lighthouse with a row of irises. She and Margaret live in an apartment above the shop for 18 years, and Isobel’s business thrives. Over the years, Isobel sews a tapestry that tells her own story.

Margaret has no talent in sewing and does not see colors, which relieves Isobel. Isobel claims her daughter’s father died at sea during her crossing from Scotland. Margaret develops a passion for reading, marries a schoolmaster’s son, and writes on women’s education. When she is 20, Isobel finds her reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, which brings back painful memories. She considers telling Margaret about her past, but Darling advises against it. After years of friendship, she confesses her love for Darling, and the two become lovers. Isobel eventually reads The Scarlet Letter, though she is uncertain how she feels about it. She is happy that she saved Margaret from Pearl’s fate.

Margaret has twins and names her daughter Isobel. Ivy visits to meet the babies, bringing the doll’s dress Isobel made for her before leaving Salem. Margaret finds a scarlet “A” in the stitching, and asks her mother if The Scarlet Letter is about her. Isobel resolves to reveal her past.