And here is the part that especially angers Rosalie: “And should the last bolt strike your son, dear mother bear it patiently . . . my Brothers and Sisters (Heaven protect them) will add my love and duty to their own, and watch you with care and kindness until we meet again.”

As if any one of them can substitute for John! As if even all together they can conjure half of Mother’s love for him! As if he doesn’t know that he’s consigned Rosalie, for the rest of her life, to try to be enough for Mother and to fail.

The second letter is addressed To Whom It May Concern. “This country was formed for the white not the black man,” John says.

And looking upon African slavery from the same stand-point, held by those noble framers of our Constitution, I for one, have ever considered it, one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us,) that God ever bestowed upon a favored nation. Witness heretofore our wealth and power. Witness their elevation in happiness . . . no one would be willing to do more for the Negro race than I, could I but see a way to still better their condition . . .

—

Like Mother, Edwin finds it impossible to sleep alone. His friend William Bispham shares his bed at night. During the day, Edwin stays inside, afraid to be seen in public. After dark, he walks the streets with Bispham and Aldrich. Everyone who loves him is afraid that he will drink, but he doesn’t.

He speaks often of the day he saved Robert Lincoln at the train station. The story, which he’d hardly remembered, has become one of his great comforts.

He tells Bispham he doesn’t know when it all went wrong for John. He was a loving child and so full of fun. They’d all adored him. He wonders what Father would have said. June writes with his usual stolid pragmatism that he expects they all will recover in time with the exception of Mother, who will clearly never recover.

At the suggestion of Thomas Aldrich, Edwin writes an autobiography of his childhood as a gift to Edwina, who has been with Asia since before the assassination. This fills a few days. As soon as he finishes, he destroys it.

He writes letters.

He writes to Asia daily: “. . . imagine the boy you loved to be in that better part of his spirit, in another world.”

He writes to Adam that he takes comfort in the knowledge that one great heart will never forsake him. He doesn’t mean Adam though no heart is more his than Ad’s. He means Blanche Hanel.

He writes to the American people: