“‘I cannot be your brother.’ He spoke low, then stepped the last bit to the edge.

“‘Yes!’ I cried, coming a little closer, my hand reaching out to him in my eagerness. ‘You must! We are a family. Grab hold!’

“‘You are a family,’ he replied.”

George closed his eyes.

“What did you say then, George?” Susannah whispered.

For several moments, he did not speak, but lay with his eyes closed against the final sight.

“‘I said, ’We must stand together. Our sister is with child.‘

“‘Nay!’ he cried, looking at me with horror, and I grabbed hold of him to stop him, but he stepped—and we both fell.”

And then poor George covered his face with his hands, shaking his head back and forth upon the pillow as though he’d loose what he had seen from out his head. I shuddered at the sight of our brother stepping off that ledge as though it were a stair, his dark-coated body plummeting down across the white rock face, pulling Georgie behind; the men’s startled cries and hurried footsteps in the half dark of that twilight as they crossed the quarry floor to reach Hayden and George. And all around them, Hayden’s desperate Nay! still echoing against the rock, repeating the last breaths of his sad life.

25 May

George is worse.

27 May

Today no better. Dr. Bates rests here.

30 May

This morning, George smiled at me and died.

3 June

Susannah stood above me, very quiet—and then she pulled an envelope from her pocket. “Just look at this,” she whispered savagely. “Now you will see how foolish is your brain!”

I reached up and took the piece of mail into my hand. It was from Ireland and addressed to Hayden Gilroy.

“Where did you get this, Susannah?”

“It arrived this morning.”

I raised my eyes to her, uncomprehending.

“Read it,” she hissed.

Trembling, I pulled the thin official piece of paper from the envelope and read the death certificate in my hand.

Johnny Gilroy died on this day, 16 August 1840, age six months. Typhus.

“You see how your imagination did break our house?” she wailed, and then she sunk to the ground before me.

Our mother’s story is the hole through which we are all fallen.

June

Clouds trail overhead, picking down the sky with purple hems—if you are going to him, my sweet duchesses, please to let him know—I am Sorrow.

June

I am sole occupant of this room, left behind to the great wide table where I am writing this in daylight, for Sue will not enter while I am in here. Last night she whispered at me, “Nell,” and came to the foot of my bed to put a shaking hand upon the stead. She has grown terribly thin and pale. “Do you think you might change into your nightdress now, Nell?”

I looked down at my walking costume, a little soiled but quite adequate. “Nay, Sue. This does me well.”