There were two sets of papers, Bernard was explaining: as if she hadn’t figured that out. This compact storeroom, where she’d carried on with Savery’s work when no one else was interested, held crates once packed with wine or teacups or cheese, now stuffed with letters and scrapbooks, photographs and newspaper clippings, the bounty men from the regiment had sent in response to the circulars Savery had distributed throughout the state. Their scraps and relics had filled his barn. Swords, hats, buttons, badges, stained cockades and torn memorandum books; he kept whatever they gave him, although organizing it all—she could admit this now—had been beyond him.

“The first set my uncle sent some time back,” Bernard said. “The others I packed up and sent myself, not quite two years ago. I should have checked before sending those on. If I’d known about your brother . . .”

Savery, with his left-leaning limp and his spiky dry hair, who when she was small had made dolls for her out of corn husks and who, after the war, had settled into the desk job a neighbor was good enough to offer. Before the war, he’d wanted to go to the Colorado Territory and search for gold. Now Colorado was a state and he, like Izzy—

“My brother left three children,” she said, “and a wife—I’m sure you understand. And I have two daughters of my own. There was so much to do that for a while I just set the papers and letters aside when they kept arriving. But then the library director kindly offered this storeroom, and as soon as I could I brought the papers here and started work on the project myself.”

As she spoke—she had given this speech before—she watched Bernard’s companion ease her way into the room. Looking, judging. Scanning the dusty mounds. The school bell sounded across the square, a cardinal called, the fat white cloud to the west of the grove drifted east and shadowed the window, so deeply surrounded by shelves and boxes that it looked like a porthole. She’d grow tired, Sissy thought. They both would. The papers would baffle them and they’d leave. Visitors came at inconvenient times and almost always interrupted some vital chain of thought, but then always left.