Today, in honor of our last sitting, I wore the ivory combs with the painted roses in my hair—a gift I had received in the post a few days ago along with a note promising that by tomorrow evening, my favorite uncle would be here, at Seven Sisters! Along with the package arrived an assortment of trunks and boxes, much more than my Uncle would need during his stay. I suspected the trunks held gifts, perhaps mementos of his many adventures. Or maybe they belonged to an exciting guest.

Uncle Louis would be with us by dinner tomorrow and would stay with us for the rest of the summer. Perhaps this is why my father had decided to tour our land; he frequently and quite loudly denounced Uncle Louis, his wife’s brother, as a proud man with more money than brains. Mother and Father had shouted loudly at one another before he had left again, this time taking only Early with him. I hated my father’s petty jealousy over Uncle Louis. Tall with an elegant, pale radiance, my uncle towered over my father. He adored speaking French and frequently sent Mother and me books of poetry and collections of stories that we both relished. I had not laid eyes on my fair uncle for well more than two years. He was so busy traveling, acquiring new things, seeing new places. Oh, how I longed to leave with him, to see the world beyond the red dirt roads that encircled Seven Sisters—roads to my prison! I thought often that I would die here, finally stuffed inside the stone crypt along with my dead siblings. A quiet voice from deep within my heart promised that this would not be my fate.

With my chin lifted in faux confidence, I entered the parlor with a firm smile that I hoped masked my insecurity. Mother was in bed, where she would stay until the baby arrived—it was left to me to be the lady of the house to any guests, invited or otherwise. So far, I had received a local merchant, who had insisted on showing the “lady of the house” his latest collection of furniture samples, wooden miniatures that he insisted would be custom-made. How privately amused I had been when the rude fellow had managed to gain access to a mere sixteen-year-old girl with no authority to even purchase supplies for the pantry.

I also sat through an uninteresting tea with the birdlike Lennie Ree Meadows and her giggling niece. If they had held any disappointment at being entertained by me, they had hidden it very well. They were more interested in the condition of my mother and the whereabouts of my father than me. Feeling unusually generous toward our chatty neighbors, I dismissed their queries with benign and vague answers but rewarded (or distracted) the quivering Ms. Meadows with my happy news—Uncle Louis was on his way.

“Only just last week, we received the wonderful news that dear Uncle Louis is coming for a visit. He will stay for a few months before returning north to see his oldest sister, Mrs. Olivia Grant. We will be honoring him with a late spring banquet, and of course, you and your niece must come.” As expected, this was the tidbit of gossip Ms. Meadows required. She quickly departed, presumably to boast that she had received a personal invitation to dinner at Seven Sisters. She would be the one to announce to the community that the elegant Louis Beaumont would once again pay a visit to Mobile. He was getting older but was undoubtedly still one of Alabama’s most eligible bachelors. I giggled to myself thinking of my Uncle Louis married to the nervous Lennie Meadows.