In Oxford, Massachusetts, on July 7, 1769, Martha recalls diphtheria sweeping through the town and striking the Ballard household with particular force. Although Martha and Ephraim remain healthy, all six of their children fall ill one after another while Martha is pregnant with a seventh child. Martha and Ephraim try everything they can—cold baths, broth, licorice, chamomile, and constant care—but the children’s fevers, swelling throats, and choking gray mucus only worsen, and Cyrus seems especially close to death.

Triphene dies first. After climbing into bed beside her parents, she is found dead by morning, and Martha and Ephraim call for Elspeth to stand with them as they bury her, since they cannot leave the other children unattended and need someone to witness their grief. Eight days later Dorothy dies as well, and three days after that their eight-year-old daughter Martha, who had seemed the least endangered, suddenly dies when her heart slows and stops.

After the third burial, Martha believes the illness may take the entire family and briefly feels that death might be the only way they could all be together again. Instead, the morning after little Martha is buried, Cyrus unexpectedly begins to recover. His life is saved, but the sickness permanently destroys his voice, leaving him able to make only a croak or groan. Jonathan recovers next, then Lucy, and their survival brings relief that is inseparable from grief when they ask what happened to their sisters.

Standing beside the graves of their daughters, Ephraim says he wants to leave Oxford, find more land, build a real farm, and perhaps a mill so the family can start over. Martha, still raw with grief, hears this as a desire to abandon their dead children and refuses. When Ephraim insists that the girls are no longer there, Martha strikes him and then walks away, unable to bear his attempt to move forward.