Margaret swivels and points back toward the house. “Somewhere over there. Granny took charge of that too. It was all such an awful disgrace, she didn’t invite anybody. I wasn’t allowed to go, it was just Granny and her sisters and the minister, so I never got to properly say good-bye. It’s not even marked. Mummy wanted to be buried next to my father’s kit, apparently.”

“His kit?”

“His kit bag. It came home after he died, and Mummy couldn’t bear it, so she made Annie bury the thing.”

“Oh, poor Annie.”

“It was jolly awful for her, I imagine. Everybody adored Daddy. He was the most—the best—the most wonderful—”

I don’t say a word. What can I possibly say? I kneel in the clean-smelling mud next to Margaret while she goes to pieces. The larks keep on yammering, as if nothing’s happened.

When we return, Margaret climbs the stairs for a nap, and I return outside. I’m too restless to lie down, my head too crammed with new ideas, new images, this damp, heartbroken childhood of Thorpe’s.

The drizzle’s eased, leaving behind a bleak landscape, December gray. I walk past the carriage house and its air of abandonment, its missing roof tiles, broken door. I think how it must have looked thirty years ago, and how long it’s been left like this. Whether Thorpe might have learned to ride a pony here, or whether the decline had already begun. The ground’s soft beneath my boots, the grass limp and dying. I realize I’m headed toward the place Margaret pointed out, the place where Thorpe’s mother is buried, next to the effects of her husband, but when I reach that place, the general area indicated by that long finger, there’s nothing to see. No marker of any kind. The same grass, the edge of a thicket. And yet they’re there, the two of them. The grief, it’s inside the soil.

I hear the sound of squishing footsteps an instant before the brisk Scotch voice. “You ought not to be out like this, Mrs. Thorpe.”

“Annie! You startled me.”

“You ought to be inside, where it’s warm.”

“I don’t mind the cold. It makes me feel closer to him.”

“Won’t do him a bit of good, though. Nor his babe.”

I nod toward the thicket. “Is that where they’re buried?”

She hesitates. “Who, ma’am?”

“Margaret said they’re buried here. Her mother and—well, not her father, but his kit bag. You buried it.”