Father plays Hamlet around the house for a few days, the bereaved and guilty son, but this doesn’t last long. “It’s a terrible thing,” he’ll tell June one night at the table, “to lose a father. But a father’s death must be expected in the natural course of things. That’s not the ghastly unnatural fiend who comes and steals your child.”

—

A little school for white children opens on the Bel Air Road. For most of its pupils, the shortest route cuts across the Booth property and Rosalie can see them from the kitchen window as she does her chores of washing up and churning or grinding the spices or slicing the onions; or from the lawn as she hangs out the wet laundry on sunny, windy days. The schoolchildren walk in clusters, with their slates and their books. In the winter, they pelt each other with snowballs. In the spring, they chase each other, the girls dashing, laughing, to the safety of other girls. This school will be a good thing for Edwin and Asia, Rosalie tells herself, and will relieve her from constant guardianship.

She herself is too old and too busy to think about school. She hardly remembers her time in the classroom in England. Henry Byron’s death eclipsed most memories. But she does remember Father being proud of her, an occurrence so rare as to never be forgotten.

One morning, June asks Rosalie to come out for a walk with him. She would rather not. Johnny is sleeping and can’t come with her. She’ll be very exposed.

But June is insistent. He coaxes her out to the creek in the forest where they once were knights and ladies, kings and queens. The wind is up. The loose strands of her hair sting her face as they whip about it. Twigs and leaves tumble in the current below, bubbling around the rocks or landing in the deadfall piled on the banks. Once Rosalie could cross this creek, dancing stone to stone. Her spine has begun to curve just slightly, throwing her weight off-center, making her too clumsy to try. Mother thinks this is from carrying Johnny around and is making Rosalie shift him to her other hip, which doesn’t work for Rosalie and she only does it if Mother is watching.

June pulls her into one of the fairy ballrooms, a bare patch of dirt ringed with trees and sheltered from the wind. “I’m leaving for Philadelphia tomorrow,” he says. “I’ve been offered a place in the company there.” And then, watching her face, “Oh, Rosie!”