I struggled to do so, wanting to leave this gray place, wanting the solid of our house, the trim white sheets of my own bed and the cold window glass between the inner and outer worlds. I rose to my feet, swaying a little into her encircling arm. She turned us toward the home path. We walked side by side in silence. Around me, the trees leaned to listen. I promised nothing. As the woods thinned, as we approached the wide back field that stretched behind our house, my heart eased somewhat. But Mother was not finished. She put her lips up to my ears and whispered into them, her breath hot in my hair.

I have named my little one—Perdita.

There is my baby crying at the back of the house—I can hear her tiny little wail. I raised up my head, but all about me is darkness, and when I try to move, I cannot swing my legs from the bed, I am grown so weak and feeble.

“Susannah!” I called. But I cannot even hear her, and since I have written this, I do not hear the baby’s call.

I woke with a start, my heart beating wildly. “Where is my baby? Where is my girl?”

Susannah’s face bent near. “Hush now.”

I turned to her. “Where is my baby girl?”

She patted my hand, though there is such coldness in her face!

“Sue,” I cried, and I lay back, weak as a child, weeping. “I thought I held her little body in my arms as on that first night. I thought she lay beside me—I was digging.”

“Hush now.” And my dear sister stroked my cheek, her face a bit softer.

“Try to think it for the best,” she then said, though her voice was strange.

“What is for the best?”

“You never wanted a child.”

I closed my eyes.

“That’s right,” she said. “Think of that.”

I turned my head upon the pillow, away from her voice, and slid back into the welcome darkness.

“Mother!” I cried another night. “Oh, where is my mother?”

Susannah’s chair fell backward with a thud. I opened my eyes. Only the light burned low in the room, and Sue’s face leaning over me seemed half of darkness, half of light.

“How do you speak of Mother?”

I think I did not know my sister. Something buried had risen in her eyes.

I moaned. She patted my hand, though her touch was heavy, not gentling.

“Do not speak of Mother more. Do not speak of them who are gone. I cannot,” she cried fiercely to me, “I will not, bear it!”

My baby had bright black hair and eyes shut tight—

Three months are passed, and the gap on this page a silent witness. I have been lost to myself, to my sister. I do not recall Mother’s face any longer—only the smooth round of stone we placed upon it.