He stared at the Gibb door, that ingenious device that slipped upward inside its frame and disappeared into the wall upstairs. Gabrielle had insisted on Gibb doors in all the second-story rooms. In the summer, they could be raised for cross-ventilation without the awkwardness of propped doors. One of them opened onto the oyster porch above the kitchen, from which Gabrielle could call out to the vendors in the alley, who would then leave their goods on the back stoop and chalk her account on their slates.

Let her have her whims. He’d already put two wives in their graves—sisters, Julia and Ellen Savage.

Julia was dead now these past twenty-two years. He had two children out in the world, a son named after him and a daughter, Elizabeth Savage Waddell—Miss Lizzie—both by Julia, who got him through the War.

Ellen, the younger sister, had passed away just three years ago come October. The sisters rested under a common headstone at Oakdale Cemetery. Make them to be remembered with Thy saints, read the inscription under the granite cross.

He’d never expected to marry again. But he had—just a little over a year after Ellen’s death. The local wags had a good time over that one. Let them. It was good to have a woman to run the household and handle the servants. A man had other work. It was a fine piece of luck that she’d come with a new house, so he could move out of that firetrap on Third Street.

He shifted on his down mattress and untangled the nightshirt that had somehow gotten wrapped around his legs, constricting his circulation. The church bells rang a last note and then stopped, leaving the round, whole tone hanging in the air.

He would attend the late service.

Legs, that was his dream. And a horse, a strong, wild horse under him, rearing and plunging through water. He smiled, remembering the horse. Thrashing through sand, mud, swampy thicket. Then falling against a hill, pinning his legs. When he’d opened his eyes in the dream, the horse had become a locomotive, crushing his legs. Women screamed all around him, but he could see no one. He dragged himself out from under the locomotive, now become a horse again, and staggered to the top of a hill. His legs pained him so badly he could hardly stand. They swelled and throbbed. All around him, in the misty dark below, he could hear wailing voices. But he could see nothing. Some of the voices were calling his name. He stood on the hill, doused in moonlight, baffled, his legs going numb, threatening to buckle any second.

He poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on his night table. Later, he would go down to the kitchen and drink a full quart of cold well water, fast, as he did every morning of his life. It cleared a man’s bowels.