Willie has been sick since January, his condition improving and worsening capriciously, allowing his desperate parents to continue to hope. When his death finally comes, it’s more than his mother can bear. Mary never recovers. She clears the White House of everything that might remind her of Willie. She never again enters the room in which he died. She asks his friends not to visit, and since they were little Tad’s friends as well, Tad’s loneliness and loss are extreme. He begins to cling to his father. Lincoln conducts the war with Tad in his lap. Nighttime finds Tad sleeping, curled up like a cat, beneath his father’s desk, his head on his father’s shoes.

ii

In April Edwin receives a letter from Mother, the handwriting slanted with haste, the page often blotted. It seems that Joe has disappeared.

He’d joined the Union army, but left his post on learning he was not to be immediately made an officer. It’s a distinction not many can boast—to have deserted both the Confederate and the Union armies in less than a year.

He’d then come home to his mother, saying that he was troubled in his mind. When Mother’s ministrations began to annoy him, John took him off to New York to work as his personal assistant and valet. Joe didn’t actually do the tasks he’d been hired to do and, despite this, complained ceaselessly about the stinginess of his wages. John, he said, was a money-grabber. It ended in a terrible row and he’d stormed away.

No one has seen him since.

John has searched the hospitals, spoken to the police. Not a hair has been found. Mother is, of course, collapsing. She’d given him money, June had sent him fifty dollars, and he’d helped himself to the salary he felt he deserved from John so he’s not without funds. By the time Mother’s letter reaches Edwin, Joe’s been missing for more than three weeks. John writes that initially he’d feared suicide. Now he thinks Joe has gone to sea.

One morning, Edwin decides to see J. M. W. Turner’s final works. He stands for a long time before each one as others come and go, their voices hushed, their footsteps tapping on the marble floors. The critics have uniformly hated Turner’s whales and Edwin uniformly hates the critics so he’d hoped to see genius. Instead, he likes them no better than anyone else. All bosh and whitewash.