I did as she bid me, and when I returned, I saw she had composed herself then, too, her hair pulled back and her sleeves pushed all the way down around her wrists, so her fine white hands rested plain again upon the coverlet.

And now she has told me. All of it.

2 Pierpont Place

Brooklyn, New York

6 January

My dear,

I have not had a word from you and I worry. Last night, I had a waking dream in which you came to me and stood beside my bed. You did not reach out your hand. You did not lie beside me. Only gazed down upon me. I tried to speak but found I could not open my mouth. For a long moment, we stared at each other, and then you turned and walked back through the door.

I feel cold and uneasy—I fear I am dead in your heart. Please send me a few words, at least to know that all is well with you.

Ludlow

15 January

Ludlow—

We have lost Mother.

Dr. Bates said her heart burst from the strain of keeping up with too unquiet a mind. We are in a strange state up here—too strange.

Go to her to whom you were bound—let her be the place upon which you build. Let me not be your history, Ludlow. Mine is a gaunt, unexplainable thing.

Nell

15 January

Here is his letter by my page. There are his words by mine. His hand lay warm upon this paper. And yet, I cannot—

I am place, Ludlow. A mad place.

27 January

A fine sheath of snow and ice covers the granite back, and the hush and white of the winterland made me feel a very ghost haunting my summer days, the green path stretching gray now through strict, unbending trees. I looked behind at my own footprints softly whispering into the silent terrain, and I marked the spot I stood upon, scratching my name into the snow with the tip of my boot.

30 January

George considers Hayden Gilroy to have been unfairly treated and has asked him back into the house. How am I to prepare the others?

I cannot think. What course must I keep to? What must I best do?

1 February

I dreamed of Mother suddenly, standing upon our wharf with a lantern in the fog, and I was little and returning home with Father from the town, and held the bow painter in my hand, my body pressed into the triangle of the bow and speeding forward toward home, though we could not see it, and Father’s breath as he grunted was all I heard. And all in the dense fabric of the fog—the world stood so full, so silent and so waiting—behind me my father and the oars, and there ahead the light that meant Mother but was not Mother. How had Mother known to come just then and meet us? But indeed, she had only just come down that time and was hanging the lantern on the dock sprit and making ready to return, when she heard the oars, and so turned round. But before I knew this, before I knew what was actual, what was reason, there it was—all that was. I leapt up with the painter and passed it into Mother’s outstretched hand.