“You’ve got a chance now.” She was weary, had an edge. She hated traveling, hated moving. It took so much energy to start all over each time. The older she got, the harder it became. She was nearly thirty now, and it was very hard. This was the last move. The bargain was, they would settle here. If they moved again, it would be her choice. To a place she picked out. For her own reasons, not Sam’s.

“All that’s behind us now. I swear.” He believed it, he could feel it. This was a new feeling he had, as if a great heaviness were evaporating from his body. The heaviness had been there so long that he had forgotten what it felt like to be without it.

It had been with him at Las Guasimas, in Cuba, as he wandered around the jungle in a feverish haze, unable to find out what was going on. It had been with him when he saw two men shot dead in front of him and a fellow correspondent named Edward Marshall take a Mauser ball in the back and later, leaning paralyzed against a tree, dictate his dispatch to Stephen Crane.

The copious rations of contraband whiskey hadn’t kept away the fever. And the whiskey hadn’t made him any braver. While the army moved on San Juan, Sam retreated. He made it by packet boat to Miami on July 1, the day the Rough Riders were charging up San Juan Hill and into the history books.

The biggest story of the war, and he missed it because he was too scared. And still he got home to Chicago too late.

Gray Ellen shifted in her seat. She could not get comfortable in this humid heat. “That’s what you said when we left Philadelphia two years ago.”

He dropped her hand. “Look, this isn’t going to work if you keep carping. Forget Chicago. Forget Philly. We’re here now. I’ll be writing for a real newspaper.”

He had written Cousin Hugh, asking for a job. They were only vaguely related, but Hugh put a lot of stock in family. “Come down here and help us promote the place,” he’d written. “Forget Chicago—Wilmington is the city of the future.”

Gray Ellen showed no reaction. Since losing the baby only six weeks earlier, she’d been like that a lot—distant. The day she miscarried, Sam was on a drunk in Miami. When he got home and found out, he went on another binge.

Next time, Sam was determined, it would go better. No reason why not. It was just bad luck before, and what could you do about luck? But luck could change. This was a new place. He’d been dry for a month. They said if you could beat it for a month, you could beat it for good. His head was clear of fever. He had his old ambition back.