“Now,” she said, “here’s some hot potato soup I fixed special,” and he roused up greedily, leering at the bowl with its white steam and freckles of pepper. “My,” the woman declared, “you look a sight better, even with that bad bruise. I washed the mud off your face while you slept, and you never budged.”

“What time is it?” The soup scorched into the aching core around which his body was built.

Eva Duffey looked at the bustling clock. Her eyes glittered, keener and icier than ever, and the little house cap she wore seemed as always: a trap wherein her face was caught. “It’s half after four, Daniel. Tell me about Adam.” She stood caressing her hardened fingers, waiting for him to begin.

“Yes,” he said. “Then I will go back to them.”

Chapter 12

12.

They used to keep Irene’s piano in the sitting room but that room became sacred to Tyler’s convalescence when he was on furlough after his Antietam wound, and Demon and Mr. Fanning had hauled the piano into the library. There it stood, yet, a green baize drape over it and stacks of music gathering dust underneath. The girl had not played … she did not know how long since she had played. So many months. She recalled sitting there and picking meticulously at something of Liszt’s, in a German musical magazine, when the bare fields were brown, ages before.

It was odd now that she should desire the touch of ebony and ivory—wish her slippers to feel the felt-wrapped pedals, and experience the ache of the novice as she spread fingers over the octaves. She went into the library alone, in the dusk of Sunday night, and lifted off the cloth (it stuck; something sticky had been laid upon it days before, and now she must get a new green baize covering).

Am not a widow … she thumbed the music sheets: some were fresh and unexamined, some were dog-eared folios which came from her home in Philadelphia when the piano came. Chopin, Op. 35, No. 2. Well, she thought, I’m not afraid of it. Dusk was damp as autumn. She could barely see the keys. Mrs. Fanning would not mind her playing, if indeed she could hear through the walls and floors and depths of slumber where she buried her breathing. Am still a wife, with a husband who was alive yesterday and must be alive still.

She faltered a little after the third measure and then secured new confidence and went on, holding her face close to the sheet and wondering why she didn’t stop to light a candle. When she reached into the higher blacks, something rattled and fell upon the floor. It sounded like a coin. Irene went to get matches and candles, and looked for the object when she returned to the room. A reek was all around her, cologne would never take it away, nothing could serve for a remedy but the years ahead.