The strangest thing of all to realize was that she had lived nearly fifty years in this house. She had not felt the years passing; she had slid over them like over ice, carried along by momentum rather than will. But how things had changed, over those years! Folding the napkins now, she couldn’t help but recall when her sole obligation before meals had been to sail in and out of the kitchen and dining room, giving orders, straightening a wayward fork, a misplaced goblet. Then she would sit down at the piano and play until someone summoned her. “Ma’am, do you want the flowers in the center of the table? Which sauceboat should I use for the gravy?”

But that was years and years ago. She hadn’t had anyone to cook and serve meals since John had lost much of his money in the stock market crash in 1929.

She hadn’t cared about the money, not really. Even fashionable clothes meant nothing to her anymore. And with clever management, hard work, and a bit of help from a woman who came two days a week to clean, she had kept the house in good enough shape, good enough at least to keep the façade from crumbling, to keep the neighbors from seeing her and her husband’s failings. There seemed no point to try for more. Life had lost its luster way back in 1917 when the boys left for the war, and the light had gone out entirely when Chase was killed.

That she had never been the same went without saying. Sometimes she still could not imagine that his body had never come home: By the time she and John had received word after the war that it was safe to disinter him, it had simply seemed too late. They had decided not to disturb his rest; the grave in the Pine Rapids Cemetery that she put flowers on remained empty.

But a need to touch the ground under which her son lay had grown within her. When she found out about the government-sponsored voyages for Gold Star Mothers, she wrote to the district’s congressman and within weeks was boarding a train at the Pine Rapids depot. It was the summer of 1927.

She had arrived in New York bitter, her back aching from the hours spent on the train. Yet, once on the ocean, standing at the rail of the ship with the sea spray dashing her face, watching the Statue of Liberty shrink to the aft, she began to feel her burden lightening, her decade-old frown relaxing. She began to feel a freedom she had not felt since she was a child, since the days before she had begun trying so hard to be a Proper Girl.