It’s full dark by the time they arrive. The wind rustles through empty branches. No stars show, just one bit of bright cloud pulled like a curtain over the moon. Something dashes across the lawn at the front of the house. Asia thinks it’s a rabbit, but it’s gone before she really sees it. The snow crust crunches underneath her shoes as she steps down from the cariole. A black child she doesn’t recognize unhitches the horse, takes the reins from Johnny and Joe, and leads the horses away, clucking softly. “Thus begins the winter of our discontent,” Johnny says, for Asia’s ears only.

She finishes the quotation in her head. Made glorious summer by this son of York. Why leave off the hopeful part? The windows of Tudor Hall glow yellow with lamplight. Someday this will feel like home, Asia thinks, and then how welcome a sight that light will be.

The Halls have already unpacked for them and made it comfortable, fire in the fireplace, tapers on the tables, lamps in the windows. Furniture in the rooms, dishes on the shelves, clothes in the wardrobes. The walls and floors are clean and new and every room smells of freshly sawn wood.

Ann Hall and Aunty Rogers are waiting with a supper Asia is too tired and too sad to eat. She watches as the two women hug her mother, each holding on long enough to bring Mother to tears. “It’ll be all right,” they tell her. “Everything will be all right,” but they, too, are crying even as they say it. They hug the children next, all except for Joe who ducks away, hightails it up the stairs before anyone can lay a hand on him.

“What a beauty you’ve become,” Aunty Rogers tells Asia, as if she hasn’t said this same thing to Asia every time she’s seen her for the last two years. Most recently, at Father’s funeral.

Aunty Rogers holds her at a distance for a better look, then pulls her close so that Asia’s skirt flattens at the front, bells out over its hoop behind. “You’ve got the Booth eyes. Same as Edwin.” Aunty Rogers has doused herself liberally with a fashionable scent—bergamot and lemon. Ann smells of butter and sugar and cinnamon and is warmer to the touch.

Asia feels Father’s absence here as acutely as she feels it anywhere. Even though he never set foot in the finished house, he’s a tangible, erroneous emptiness. She remembers his excitement as Tudor Hall began to rise. “The only way I could ever be happy in a city,” he’d once told her, “is if we didn’t have to share it with anyone else. If we had the whole place to ourselves and no one ever knew we were there.”