Clearly he’d never thought about what they might mean to her. She’d let the boxes sit for six months, among a pile brought from Horseheads. Then found, as she finally began reading and sorting the letters, several written in Savery’s youthful hand. She had mountains of pages he’d left behind more recently, but the image arising from Bernard’s accidental gift—the young Savery of twenty-five years ago, with a board on his knees and a pen in his hand, taking down the words of his companion—had made her burst into tears.

“Not in those boxes, though,” she said. “And not in the same order you packed them. I have a new system these days. When I get fresh materials I put things relating to one battle with everything else having to do with that battle, and material related to one general or one incident with material others have sent related to that incident or general or battle. That way, when I start writing, I can instantly put my hand on all the different versions.”

Miss Atkins, who’d been silent since Bernard mentioned his father, drew a deep breath. “When you start writing?”

“Those alterations,” Sissy continued, ignoring the intrusion. “If I’d known, when I first looked at the papers you sent to Savery—”

She took a page from the folder of Bernard’s transcriptions. Our boys scattered everywhere in the confusion of the first nights attack & caught hard words from some not there who don’t know what we went through—(our generals gave us such poor information and contradictory orders that) we could not keep together & even our company was separated.

Now that he’d told her, she could see it: two minds at work. Or one mind at two different times; or, looked at another way, three minds if Savery had altered anything as he first wrote down Izzy’s words. That was interesting, it might change the final account.

“But the scrapbook,” Bernard said, pulling from the wine crate a volume Sissy had looked through many times. “The comments scribbled in the margins of the newspaper articles: Izzy did write those. At least I think he did, the notes aren’t mine.”

“I’ll use that,” Sissy said. “I use everything, to keep the stories straight.”