He and John Sleeper enact a schoolroom performance of a scene from Julius Caesar, which his father comes to see and even appears to enjoy. Edwin’s desire to act has never wavered. He has a suspicion that his talents will be best suited to comedy. By now he’s grown into his own sort of popularity, which is to say that among his small circle of friends, in his quiet way, he is liked.

And then, a great change comes.

Edwin is already asleep—at fourteen, it seems he can never sleep or eat enough—when he’s suddenly aware that his mother is seated on the side of his bed, patting his hand. “Come down to the parlor, dear,” she says. She’s whispering so as not to wake Johnny or Joe. “I need to talk to you.”

Outside there is wind and rain. Inside, shadows.

Edwin rises and follows her downstairs in the dark. In spite of her stealth, Johnny comes, too. She takes the seat in front of the fire, Edwin and Johnny at her feet. Edwin seldom really looks at his mother, the woman so beautiful his father left everything to be with her. So he’s surprised by how gingerly she lowers herself to the chair, surprised by how, even in the rosy light of the fire, he sees a slight sag of skin on her neck. She kept her looks through ten pregnancies, four heartbreaks. She’s still beautiful, but the fading has begun.

Johnny puts his head into her lap and she smooths his hair. Edwin is the one she speaks to. “When your father leaves on his next tour,” she says, “you’ll be going with him.”

Johnny raises his head. “I’ll go.”

Johnny is so much quicker than Edwin. Edwin hasn’t even begun to take in what’s being asked. “What about school?”

“You’ll still go to school. Whenever you’re home in Baltimore,” Mother says.

What if you were suddenly offered everything you ever wanted, but the offer came in a voice so sad, with a face so sorry, it made you wonder if you’d ever wanted it at all?

“I’ll go,” says Johnny. “Ned’s better at school than I am.”

“My love, you’re much too young,” Mother tells him. She will never send Johnny away. Edwin, on the other hand . . . To Edwin, it feels as if Mother is opening the front door and thrusting him out into the storm.

“Ned gets everything,” Johnny says.