June and Hattie are living as man and wife in a small house on the steep slope of Telegraph Hill. The kitchen overlooks the endless noise, motion, odor, and color of Portsmouth Square. Edwin arrives there in mid-January. He’s planning on going home to Baltimore. He imagines June will want to go home, too.

But June’s had more time to get used to the idea of Father dead and even when the news was fresh, it didn’t unmoor him in the same way. He’d promptly written his mother and also sent a letter after Edwin, a letter that never arrived. And then, that very night, June had returned to the stage.

He can see now that Edwin is not at his best, but only Hattie is genuinely alarmed for him. Hattie is eighteen, sensitive, and sympathetic. June is thirty-one, stolid and established. He claps Edwin on the back, says that Father wouldn’t want to see him this way. He then leaves for work. Hattie finds a shawl for Edwin’s shoulders, washes and patches his clothes, sits with him to make sure he eats three entire pieces of toast dripping with butter and drinks a cup of strong coffee. Her voice is commanding—sit down, drink this—but also gentle. The maternal behavior that Edwin found so objectionable in Panama, he now craves. He only worries that too much kindness will make him cry so hard he will never stop.

That evening, by candle, fire, and moonlight, June shares the details of Father’s death as he knows them. Shadows jump about the room. There’s a loud rain outside, and occasionally a drop falls through the chimney, lands with a hiss on the fire. Hattie reaches out and takes Edwin’s hand. Her skin is so much warmer than his. He wishes to take that warmth in, but fears the opposite is happening. Hattie’s hand cools as he holds it.

Everything he hears adds to Edwin’s pain. Father died on board the J. S. Chenoweth, never having made it back to Baltimore. Someone was with him at the end, but it wasn’t the son who’d been tasked with caring for him. It was a stranger, a young man named James Simpson. Simpson had recognized Father on deck earlier and then a few days later, noticed his absence. He’d made his way to Father’s cabin, where the smell of sickness was overpowering.

Simpson had the cabin and linens cleaned, sat by Father’s bed, and asked what else he could do. Father was already past coherence. “He spoke but I could understand nothing,” Simpson said. “Only that he had suffered a great deal and been exposed to much.” Simpson was holding his hand when he died. Father’s last words were “Pray, pray, pray.”