“Strange?”

“Yes, almost bashful—as if he wondered whether I would accept the gift he held for me in his arms!” She laughed through her tears. “So silly, when he held my child: my life restored to me, then. It was your papa gave me back my life—you, Maisie.”

I put my head upon Mama’s breast, envisioning my young papa standing in the door. She stroked my hair. Her head turned upon the pillow as though she listened intently. I raised up.

“I can almost hear him come again,” she whispered.

“No, Mama!” I said brokenly.

“Almost.” She smiled and closed her eyes.

Far longer than I can measure, my mother’s face bore the stamp of her bewildered grief. I had thought Mama childlike in her behavior, inordinately dependent upon Papa, deferring to and addressing him exclusively in all manner of her expression. But the great silence of the first few weeks upon our return seemed to make of her a majesty, with a terrible power in her sorrow, and my small stilled heart seemed mewling by compare. After that first morning, she did not mention Papa again to me, as though she wished to lock him away, and seeing it was her best consolation, I did not speak aloud against the magnificent fortress of her grief.

Outside the house, autumn drew close about us. From my window, I watched the tilting glory of bright yellow in the sycamores give way to the umbrella spires of bare spindled trunks and darkening afternoons. The woolen mantles slung upon the front hall settee gave way to fur-lined greatcoats, and Parsons sent up stewpots thickened with brandy for our quiet dinners.

Of visitors, there were plenty. And for these, Mama rose to appear suitably adjusted to her state of mourning, sad but not melancholic. Grief—the very word, let alone the feeling—had a touch of fever in it, too hot and furious for the resigned matron Mama was expected to be as she received the well-meaning consolations. I would watch the light rise in her cheeks as she bent her head and listened, her gentle voice plying social questions of the caller, her fingers at work upon a tiny pillow. But as their voices faded away in the hall and the heavy front door shut behind the bustle and the interest, the work would fall from her hands. I became accustomed to these abrupt descents, the curtain having lowered upon the stage, and knew just how to pry the work from off her lap without her noticing, tucking it gently into the basket at her feet, then taking up my post in an opposite chair, the house quieting round us once again.