One morning, I sat at the round table in my schoolroom, idly flipping through old lessons. Upon the reverse of a dictation, I wrote, Shall I marry Jonathan Trumbull Lanman? My hand cupped the pen and rested on the white page. There was a comforting pleasure in writing out all three of his names—such round solidity displayed before me. Below them, I wrote, Shall I be Mary Ludlow Thomas Lanman? Our two names stared back at me, mute testimony to a future I might call my own. I put the pen down. A spring breeze blew in about my shoulders. I looked out the schoolroom window, following the line of roofs to the ribbon of river beyond. The ships passed by. High tide. My fate remained undisclosed.

At last, the answer seemed to me to lie with Miss Grange. What had happened at the end of her “love story”? And in a state of mingled dread and anticipation, I wrote her thus: If there is more—if this is not a fiction, I must know. And I must see the end.

Six days later, as though it had been poised and ready to descend, I received into my hands a second packet, wrapped like the first in a dark green oilcloth. I cut the string around the cloth and carefully drew out from their wrappings a stack of pages. A note lay atop:

Very well, Maisie Thomas—

It is better so. The best way forward is through the past—through these words—so you might see, and so begin your part.

Yours very truly,
Nell Grange

This time I did not dally over her hieroglyphics; I snatched up the pages and read.

4 October 1877

It is a bright blue morning, offering a domed sky so high, you might think it called itself to mind of summer, the clouds sluffing across to weave heaven’s white upon the blue. I am sick and feverish and am forbidden the downstairs, and so I must content myself up here with little visits from Susannah and the slow movement of this daylight across the room. There are such blazes of pride to an autumn day, all fierce color tilting against the dun land advancing, Quiet Conqueror. Ah, Lord, I cannot harness my mind—she would prance a bit and not approach the mounting block.

ON DRIFTWOOD BEACH