“I killed him,” Edwin tells her. “I had just one job, to protect our father, and I grew tired of it and let him go off on his own and he died all alone on that ship because of me.” Edwin’s shoulders are shaking, his hands over his face. A crow calls and launches from a nearby tree. Rosalie watches it skim the blue sky like a stone skipping over water. Come, the croaking raven doth bellow for revenge. To the children of Shakespeare all the world’s a metaphor.

But she’s left speechless. Should she insist that he’s not to blame? On what evidence? Everyone in the family has had that same thought, however they try not to. It’s been there the whole time, like a fly at the window, buzzing in the back of their boundless gratitude, wonder, and love. She reaches to put her arms around him, but at her touch, he moves away. He won’t take his hands from his face. He sobs so hard his whole body shakes. He wipes his face with the same handkerchief he used to clean Father’s headstone and now there’s a streak of wet dirt on his cheek. Rosalie takes off her glove and erases it with her fingers. She has to rub hard.

She can find no words that might absolve him. “You saved us,” she says instead. They won’t be having that talk about John. Not now, and probably not ever.

Edwin

iii

Years ago, Edwin saw himself as a comic actor, while his friend Sleeper Clarke planned a career as a tragedian. Those roles have flipped. Sleeper never had the face for tragedy—too elastic—nor the hair—a muddle of curls. He comes that close to handsome without ever actually arriving. Whereas Edwin . . . No one, another actor will note someday soon, can stand against those eyes.

Sleeper is currently the principal Low Comic for the Arch Street Theatre company in Philadelphia. He stars in those farces that close the evening, send the audience home laughing. Whether he’s good at this or not is debatable. But he is popular.

At Edwin’s urging, Sleeper secures a position in the company for John. The spring of 1857 finds John in Philadelphia, rooming with Sleeper and Sleeper’s mother. He performs bit parts, billed as J. B. Wilkes. Though everyone in the theater world knows who his father is, it’s hoped that many in the audience do not. His performances are hit-and-miss and he’s anxious to do nothing that will tarnish the Booth name.

Back in Baltimore, Edwin says to Asia, “What a good friend Sleeper has always been to us!”

Asia sticks out her tongue.