Mother has opened the trunks and Charlotte is already wearing Elizabeth’s little gingham. It feels as much like a ghost to Rosalie as the ghosts do, seeing Elizabeth’s dress toddling around without her. Next will be Mary Ann’s apron that she so loved because it had birds on it. She was supposed to remove it when company came, but she never would. She’d made Rosalie tell her the names of the different birds cross-stitched on it—the robin, the cardinal, the wren, the blackbird—with the same diligence she’d applied to learning her letters and then, on seeing wings in the yard, would call out Apron Bird, because the issue of whether or not a bird was on her apron was more important than the name she’d taken such pains to learn. Rosalie had always known she’d see that apron on Asia someday. But to see it on Maria Mitchell . . . that would be unbearable. Surely Mother, biting off the end of her thread with her teeth, shaking out the finished dress, must feel the same.

It rains for two days and they all have to stay inside, knocking against each other. By the time Father returns, the house is crowded with resentments and deprivations. But instead of making the Mitchells leave, as both Rosalie and June assumed he would, Father gives them the carriage house. Joe Hall, who lives there like a bachelor in spite of having a wife and children—four, if you count the two dead ones, which Rosalie always does—is moved to the slave cabins.

The additional work falls hard on Rosalie, but hardest on Joe and Ann. They no longer have time for their extra jobs. The day on which Ann will be free recedes into the future. Even worse, the money they’ve been saving is secreted in the sill along the back wall of the carriage house and the move happens so quickly, they’re unable to retrieve it. They can’t recover their savings while the Mitchells live there. And the longer Uncle Mitchell spends in those rooms, the more likely he is to find it.

viii

In May of 1838, one month after the arrival of the Mitchells, the family’s ninth child is born. The birth progresses easily and no doctor is needed. No stars fall from the sky. No caul sheathes the baby’s face. It’s a boy.

There’s no two-year wait to name him. Grandfather is given the honors and he chooses the name John Wilkes. Grandfather’s translation of The Aeneid will never be finished. This naming will be his last mark on the world.