The proving was over. Mama wrote the conclusion for it herself, so I do not know how she explained it. She would not let me read it, and she never published anything about this study. In a few years’ time, this failure would be overshadowed by the hospital for women and children that would make her name, and the consulting room downtown, and my eventual life of ladyhood. But that particular night, she bundled up the last little bit of seahorses in a brown envelope and carefully placed it on the highest shelf.

Nobody in our village would say that Ben Daisy had died. Miss Hannah, in her grief would not allow it. She stayed on with us, her eyes hollow. Ben Daisy’s hat with the dried pansies she took to wearing on her own head. And when we spoke to her of him, if we ever spoke to her of him, we only said the river had him.

That first night when we’d learned of Ben Daisy, I asked Mama, “What happens to the dead?” We had cleaned the examination room, put everything in its rightful place, and we stood side by side, washing our faces and hands before bed.

“Why, they go to heaven with our Lord and Savior. You know this.”

“But what happens to their thoughts and minds?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where does their will go?”

Mama looked as if she was about to cry. “It has been a long day. Hush, please, Libertie.”

“But what happens? Where is Ben Daisy? Is he in the same place Father is and … and … everyone else?”

“Libertie, you ask too much of your mama sometimes.”

And so I understood. Mama did not have an answer. Mama did not know. That great big brain of hers could not tell me where Ben Daisy was. And because Mama didn’t know, the dead were not to be spoken of. They were all of them in another country.