My eyes came to rest upon the captain’s chest in the opposite corner, below the eaves. I crossed to stand in front of it and with one motion knelt and pulled up the lid. But it was no chaos that greeted me this time. Now three neat stacks of paper, of varying height, sat squarely at the bottom of the dim upholstered interior. And upon each stack there newly lay a covering page:

PERDITA GRANGE
A Novel in Three Volumes

Staring back at me from the depths of that trunk in triple boldness, my sister’s name repeated upon the white page was far more eerie than upon the lonely tombstone in the woods, a sad testament to just how Miss Grange had stuck. The needle paused above the cloth, the hand abstracted, the mind stung. Miss Grange had told me the pages in the trunk held everyone’s story, yet she had gathered them together and called it a novel—a novel she had titled Perdita Grange. Perdita. Perdita. My sister proliferating, my sister never ending. My head was thick in the morning light. Thick and tired. Sometime in the night, it was I who had been lost.

Downstairs, the shutters were thrown back, their wooden slats clapping into the still morning air; and it was this distant, ordinary sound, a tiny sign from the world of the living, that caused my heart to race once more within my chest. With a cry, I sprang up and made for the door, longing to return to the known regions of a summer morning.

But someone opened the attic door at the bottom of the stairs, and I heard the accompanying rattle of crockery upon a tray. I looked about me for some place to hide, and sought the protecting cover of the old window screen at the end of the attic just as Cook crossed the top of the stairs, a tray in her hands.

There was not a sound. For several long moments, there was not even a breath. I lifted my eyes above the screen and saw Cook holding the tray, utterly still at the foot of the bed, a profound sorrow clearly written upon her mottled face. Indeed, in those few moments, a transforming sorrow blessed her stern features with such a gentle look, she grew almost sympathetic, and her bearing softened. After a time, she gently set the tray upon the coverlet at the end of the bed. Again she stood motionless for a long while, looking down upon her mistress, until seemingly coming to a decision, she moved round the big bed and stood directly over Miss Grange.