Prior to her arrival, his father had forbidden Abe’s reading as a waste of his time. His stepmother encouraged his studies. “Abe was the best boy I Ever Saw or Ever Expect to see,” she will write someday when the gifts she saw early are widely recognized.

Whatever native talents he has, Lincoln attributes entirely to his first mother’s bloodline. That he was allowed to make something of them is the work of his second mother. He credits his father with none of it.

vii

Adelaide Booth begins to follow all of them, though mostly Mother, around Baltimore, shouting that Mother is a whore and the children bastard-born. She’ll appear at the market where Mother tries to sell her produce. She’ll appear outside the classroom just as the boys are leaving.

“I’ll fall on your backs like a bomb,” Adelaide cries out, trailing them through the streets, weaving through carriages and pedestrians, her contorted face obscured by her bonnet, her voice loud and spit-filled. The Bully Boys scatter when she appears, reconvene in her absence. They remain Johnny’s staunch supporters, but their fists and fisticuffs are useless against this woman. The nagging sense that he must be grateful to the Bully Boys for their continued friendship is a feeling new to Johnny and very disagreeable.

The more she shouts, the more room she is given on the sidewalks and streets. She moves through Baltimore in a private space created by her own fury. She follows Edwin and Johnny right into the schoolyard. “You brats. You ill-begotten vipers. You aren’t clean enough to step on. I wouldn’t sully my shoes.” The other children stare and Edwin’s not sure if they’re staring at her or at him. He feels the heat coming into his face. “We should come a different way,” Johnny says quietly, and after that they change their route daily. Mother hires a large black man to walk Asia back and forth from school.

Only Father is left unmolested. Mrs. Booth is not so angry that she’ll jeopardize his earnings.

Sometimes she’s accompanied by Father’s real son—a man only a few years older than June, and named for Grandfather. Rosalie tells the others that Richard Booth has actually been traveling with Father for more than a year. How Father can have imagined he would pull this off without Richard ever getting wind of the family in Baltimore remains one of the mysteries that is Father. He was, perhaps, emboldened by twenty-five years of successfully keeping his bigamy a secret from almost everyone.

Edwin rarely looks at Richard straight on for fear Richard will look back, but he knows him as a tall, pale, fragile man, nothing like June, opposite to Father in every way. Can this really be Father’s son? Edwin doubts it.