“We all work hard,” Mama said. “I do not follow what you mean, Mr. Ben.”

“I told you about my Daisy, didn’t I?” He still would not look at her. He carefully set down the mirror. “She was almost as fair as you. No, fairer. And big brown eyes. And hair down her back in curls, when she let it out. Almost like …” He let his fingers run again along the mantelpiece once more, until they lit on the last thing he hadn’t touched. The jar with the braids coiled at the bottom.

His back was still toward Mama. When he picked up the jar, he didn’t see her flinch. But I did.

I moved to remind him. “Oh, you know what that is, Mr. Ben,” I began, but Mama shot me a look so pained I stopped my explanation.

“Her hair was almost like this then,” he said. He held the jar up to better catch the dusty braids in the light.

“Nah,” he said, turning the jar around in his hands. “Daisy’s hair was finer.”

He set the jar back down and turned around. He was watching Mama’s face carefully, as if tracking which way it might turn. “Who’d all that belong to, then?” he said.

Mama took her glasses off her nose so that she could see him more clearly. “My youngest sister,” she said. She cleared her throat. “It is a keepsake.”

“And what happened to her?” Mr. Ben said. “You lose her to the body or the spirit?”

Mama took in a sharp breath. She made a low, guttural sound, as if something was wrenched from her throat. And then she looked quickly down at the newsprint in her hand. I could see her eyes moving back and forth, making some kind of calculation. I could see, in the fever of it, one eye wet and watery. She looked up.

“I think,” Mama said, her voice entirely steady but her eyes wet, “that we have come to an end with our time together, Mr. Ben. I think perhaps this is your last night here and you should wait for your sister in town. The back room at Culver’s will have you. He takes in many of our new arrivals, and—”

“So that’s it, then,” he said.

“Yes,” Mama said. “I believe it is.”

She turned to me, still crying, her voice deadly level. “Libertie, please make up Mr. Ben’s cot for him. Make sure it’s comfortable for his last night here with us. I will be working in the examination room. Be quick, girl. We have a long day tomorrow.”

And then she gathered up her ledger in her arms and walked out of the room. Mr. Ben watched her go.

He would not look at me, only at the fire, as I made his bed for him.

“Why did you go and do that?” I said as I pulled the cot closer to the fire for him.

“Leave it alone, girl.”