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Chapters (36)
  1. Title Page
  2. Epigraph
  3. VOLUME I
  4. CHAPTER ONE
  5. CHAPTER TWO
  6. CHAPTER THREE
  7. CHAPTER FOUR
  8. CHAPTER FIVE
  9. CHAPTER SIX
  10. CHAPTER SEVEN
  11. CHAPTER EIGHT
  12. CHAPTER NINE
  13. CHAPTER TEN
  14. VOLUME II
  15. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  16. CHAPTER TWELVE
  17. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  19. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  21. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  22. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  23. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY
  25. VOLUME III
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  33. AFTERWORD
  34. PRAISE FOR Grange House
  35. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  36. Copyright Page

The house is strange, strained. George’s departure with Ludlow on quarry business has left a larger hole around us. It is just we four, but Mother does not come downstairs.

16 December

Filled with words today pointing toward but not dwelling in my story. This morning I wrote as though I’d cast my body out into a sudden rain, arms outstretched so the whole five feet of me was open to it, drenched by the plash and thunder of the water. I have learned to be very quiet, the way the blank ground in new spring quiets a busy lane, holding what it knows in its dark, damp soil.

The very last page in Miss Grange’s packet was the original of a letter, and it lay on my lap like a leaf fallen out of its season. For several minutes, all I could do was stare at the familiar handwriting, the thick black ink whorling round the words.

2 Pierpont Place

Brooklyn, New York

Nell,

I am returned to her to whom I had pledged my heart before I saw you. She loves me, and I—I thought the history of my heart was written upon her dear face, and yet I see my history cannot be written. If I were to speak a lesson of my life this moment, I would utter to the breezes: A man’s history is not the course of events told one after the other; it is a place he returns to. A place he circles round and round but cannot, perhaps, ever enter.

My darling, I think you are become that place.

Ludlow

16 December

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“Papa!” I whispered, and swept the pages from off my lap. Though the diary raced forward like a fiction—indeed, in places I could see Miss Grange longing to slip her leash—Papa’s letter rose up at the end, firm and final. Firm as was my living hand clutching the page. “Oh, Mama,” I whispered now, and gathered the rest of the scattered pages to me. For the story of the grave was a love story, after all. I could read the last chapter, though it lay unwritten here. Below that little marker must lie a brother or a sister. That is what Miss Grange wished me to see. This was the tale she wished to pass on to me—I stopped.