She had pulled the present round us, and I noticed with full force the color in her cheeks and the lilt in her voice. It was clear that my “romance” might call Mama back across the threshold into life. And my heart grew full.

Like a seamstress, I saw a way to mend the great tear, and in no unnatural manner, for it was what Papa, too, would have wished. Jonathan Lanman was a man I knew he approved. And, in these past weeks, I had come to like the careful formality of his manners myself—the easy way in which he took Mama and me in charge—it was restful. I could do as I pleased while he chatted. Think as I pleased. That evening, the world’s pieces seemed to gather forces round again, and I felt right and happy, as though I heard my father’s voice in my ear, singing out the underlying song once more.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I found myself drifting along upon this gentle current, being pulled nearer and nearer to some type of declaration. It was pleasant to float along so, comfortable in the knowledge that a marriage was right and good for Mama and thus myself. Our lives would broaden with the addition of Mr. Lanman. Like the pages I had written all throughout that winter, Jonathan Lanman appeared to me a vessel in which I could mingle both the past and present. He had known Papa. He, too, would wish to carry my father forward.

Yet these peaceful visions of my future were tinged by the sad realization that we would never return to Grange House, and thus I might not see Miss Grange again in this world. And so one morning toward the end of that spring, I began to copy all I had written and recalled of Papa for Miss Grange, thinking she might like to read what had given me such solace to write. The part of me that would no longer return to her longed to spend the cozy hour by the fire she had conjured and pour my recollections into her imagined ear. I made a tidy package of my writing, tied it neatly up, and sent it off.

Within a week’s time, into my hands was delivered an answering packet, wrapped in a dark green oilcloth and postmarked from Middle Haven.

Mystified, I tore it open and saw to my surprise that Miss Grange had sent me what looked to be a diary of her own. A letter lay atop.

Maisie, it began. After all, it is clear you are the one I had hoped you to be.

I quickly lowered the page, my mind balking. Those words thrust aside the woman who had comforted me in my sorrow. Here instead stood the woman by that lonely grave in the woods. I shuddered. How Miss Grange had frightened me that day—insisting I had a part to play in her unfathomable tale.