“Amendments,” Bernard continued. “Things that Izzy said he forgot to mention when he was writing. He had me add those in as I was transcribing each letter, but since what he added was sometimes a little different from what he’d written fifteen years earlier, I put the new parts in parentheses, so we could tell which words were written when.”

“That,” Sissy said, “is something you really should have told Savery.”

“Or me,” Miss Atkins added, looking as hurt as if Bernard had failed to invite her to a birthday party.

“You were only there that once,” Bernard said. “You never saw us actually working together.”

“Did you ask me back?” she said, the answer evident in her tone. Almost Sissy could see the girl beneath the seamless bark she’d grown.

“Did you ask to come back?” When Bernard swallowed nervously, Sissy saw that the skin on his throat was smooth and fair and that he was younger than she’d first thought. “Or ever ask more than politely about Izzy, or how my work with him was going?”

“I didn’t want to pry,” Miss Atkins said. Again Sissy wondered about the nature of their friendship. “I thought Izzy—maybe you too—wanted to keep some of that private. What Izzy was going through, I mean. When he first came back, your parents dismissed me with no warning at all, and I thought that was Izzy’s doing. That he didn’t want to feel like a stranger was looking at him.”

“I can’t remember,” Bernard said. One huge hand wrapped around the other, knuckles bulging. “But,” he added hesitantly, “more likely it was my father. He didn’t tell me until after my mother died how furious he was to have been left behind to tend the business while his brothers went off to war. And I do remember him and Izzy fighting. About Izzy’s drinking, and his friends, and the fact that my father had to support us all—maybe that’s what they didn’t want you to see.”

The letters they were talking about, which Savery had kept (which she had saved) were right here. To Bernard, Sissy said, “At least you made those changes sensibly—now we can reconstruct what your uncle wrote at the time, when he was experiencing it, and what he said or thought ten or fifteen years later, after he’d heard the stories of others, and read other accounts, and had time to think about it all. Also we can compare the copies with the originals.”

“Which you must have,” said Bernard. “I couldn’t bear to look at them again, but I know I packed them.” He touched Sissy’s shoulder lightly, urgently. “Two brown boxes, sent here the August before last—they’re here?”

“Somewhere,” she replied.