“I have told him something Mother told me.”

“Mother?”

“Yes.”

“Tell it to me.” And so I told her—all of it—simply.

“Am I to believe such a story?” she half-whispered. “This mongrel vision of our life, with a blot put upon it that need not exist?”

“Yes.” I nodded.

“Why?”

“Because it is the truth,” I answered fiercely, glad to have it burst out finally into the air between us. “Our grandmother nursed Hayden—our brother!—back to health, rather than to the grave, as Mother had thought, and told our mother not a word.”

My sister watched me as if weighing when she might leap. “Go on,” she said.

“Father knew, Susannah. He knew, and he kept the secret of our brother’s life—”

She sprang and grabbed me round my waist and gave me a good shaking. “Lies!” she cried out, pushing me from her. “Lies! You are bursting with lies—” She stopped abruptly and ran her fingers down the seams of my dress on either side.

“Are you fat, Nell?”

“Susannah!” I tried to push her hands from me, but she held fast as any devil, repeating twice more, “I think you are grown fat.”

“Stop it, Sue! What are you doing?” She frightened me terribly.

Her hands encircled my waist now and she measured, thumb-to-thumb. And then she held her hands spread wide as my widened waist in front of our faces. “Do you see?”

Her wild visage suddenly recalled Mother at the end, and I batted her hands away from me and covered my eyes. “Stop it, Sue!”

And then she whispered into the gap, “This lunacy comes from your condition, Nell.”

“What?”

“You are unstable.” She pressed harder now—oh Lord! “Because you are with child.”

“Nay,” I moaned, and turned to leave the room.

“Yes. You,” she called after me. “You are to be a mother. You.” I kept walking, determined to reach the door. Why should she say it out loud? Why need it be mentioned? A sob broke out behind me, and I reached for the knob, my heart dead in its casing. I turned the cold ball and then the darkness crashed about me.

12 April

I am Mother’s echo even in this. I see it now. I am to follow behind her—telling her story to any who will listen (though Sue will not believe it). And I am to carry a child—a child!—without a father. Like Mother. I am just like Mother now.

George is kind. He came to me up here and sat beside my bed and said nothing for a long while, and strong comfort grew in his silence.

“Do not fear the town’s reaction,” he said. “I will protect our name against any and all who dare speak.”

I looked at him uncomprehending. “Thank you,” I said.

We sat together quietly and I knew he wished me to unmask Ludlow, but the longer we sat, his hands hanging between his knees, his feet shifting upon the floor, the more I saw he could not ask that question.