“You can watch me do it,” he said after he took my money. “They’ll be reading it on t’other end almost as soon as I send it.”

Maybe he thought I was thinking he’d take my money and not send it or something, or maybe he just wanted me to be standing in front of him as long as he could get me to do it. I didn’t think I looked particularly pretty today, but then again, I was probably one of those women who couldn’t look unattractive to any man. He smiled, and I watched him.

“You coming back to Charlottesville, I hope,” he said as he tapped out the words.

“Maybe for a funeral,” I said, and his smile leaped off his face.

“Oh. Sorry about that,” he said.

Not as sorry as I am, I thought, and walked out to find Hazel. I found her choosing some fish for dinner. She was talking so quickly and excitedly about how she was going to make it and her special mashed potatoes that I almost didn’t have the heart to tell her what I was doing.

“And I’m doin’ a pie for us, my apple pie with a secret ingredient. I brought that recipe from England,” she added in a whisper, as if she thought someone would overhear it and claim it for her own.

“Don’t buy too much or do too much, Hazel,” I said. “I’m leaving on the three thirty to go home.”

Her face seemed to regain years and lose every speck of hope and joy. “Why is that? You just arrived. After another day or two, your great-aunt might remember you without me introducin’ you again and again. And she has so much stored up that she can tell you about your family, your mother’s side, of course. She knows things no one else does, and there’s nothin’ as valuable to you as your own history, dearie.”

I didn’t want to tell her that my mother’s family history held little interest for me. In fact, for me, nothing in the past mattered. It was only the future, my future, that commanded my thoughts and dreams. Right now, that future looked bleak again. It wouldn’t be long before my mother would convince my father I should be married to this man or that. She cherished the idea that she would put me in the direction she chose. It was almost as if marriage was a prison sentence, and she, influencing my father to help make it happen as she wanted it to happen, was the judge and jury.

“The girl’s not sensible enough to find the proper husband on her own,” she’d say. I was like a playwright constructing my own drama, dialogues and all.