“Do you know,” Mama said behind me, “I had intended to give this to you on your wedding night.” I froze. “But I think instead that you must wear it now.” I turned and saw she held in her hands the coral choker I knew Papa had given her when I was born. It lay in her hands like a collar of burnished blood, from the center of which hung down a perfect cross of seed pearls.

“Mama!”

“Yes, my girl, let us bend convention tonight.” Mama’s tone was gay, her smile full and open, a high color in her cheeks. And she placed the choker around my neck, slipping the little gold hook into its eye to fasten it.

I took up my white dress and entered it with a mock ceremony, paying tribute to the necklace. Mama laughed out loud and turned me round so she could fasten the interminable buttons.

“Oh, Maisie,” she said warmly. “There is little this life affords that can approach the happiness of giving and receiving affection.”

I smiled at the picture I presented in the mirror.

“And should you have the unspeakable happiness,” she continued, “of becoming a mother, you will agree with me that a married life is perfect.”

I could see it before me—the children I might bend over as they lay in their beds, the cool hallways of my house, a low lamp burning in my hands as I passed into my own room. Everything still and cared for. Everyone sleeping but for me.

“In married life, there is but one head, one heart, and one mind, and you will subscribe to this, I am sure.” She stepped from behind me, one hand on my arm, and regarded me in the mirror with a proud smile.

“Whose head?” I asked her half-seriously, picking at the pearls on my neck.

She looked blankly at my reflection. “Whose head?”

“The husband’s or the wife’s?”

“Why, neither, Maisie—you two will become one. Your voice will blend to his—your hearts beating in time and yearning toward the same destined star.”

I thought of Jonathan’s opinions and of his ardent letters. To make him happy, to hear his voice always in my ear, to build a kingdom around him for him to return to—this, too, was an avenue beyond the confines of myself. Through him, as Mama said, I would become more than myself—I would become him and also better than him; I would be both. Here is another pathway, Miss Grange, I thought, another shape—and the unexpected violence of my thought against Miss Grange rent in two Mama’s soft conversation.

“Your papa’s death,” Mama said very quietly to me in the mirror, “has left me but a partial thing, a fraction now of what I used to be.”

“Let us go down, Mama,” I said, turning to her, and took her hand.