Lulu rose from the floor, dusting her knees in disgust. As she bent to do so, she noticed, half hidden in the shadow, a small leather case sitting on the floor between the shelf and the trunks. It was larger than the storage boxes, the sort of case that used to be carried by doctors, with a sturdy handle and an old, dulled brass clasp; unlike the boxes, it bore neither label nor description. Curious despite herself, Lulu picked it up, took it to the stool under the window, and opened it while the raindrops beat a tattoo above her head.

This case contained not only papers but other objects, too, a collection of a family’s souvenirs, most of them seemingly from Victorian times. There was a carved fan and a pair of kid gloves; several sheets of music, some of them unopened, for old-fashioned songs that no one had sung for a century and more; a small nightcap, now yellow with age, and some abandoned needlework; a leather box containing a little gold ring set with turquoise stones; and a black enamel brooch, with a lock of brown hair in the center arranged into the shape of a weeping willow. Hidden away in a corner, Lulu caught a glimpse of a small book with a red cover, and reached for it hopefully; but it was not recipes, only a much-worn copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress, battered and dog-eared from reading, its spine quite cracked away. Beneath the objects was a collection of paintings and drawings that had clearly been done by the same hand—whoever the family had been, someone among them must have once been artistic. There was a pencil drawing of a plump, smiling woman in a crinoline, and another of a pretty girl with the front of her hair tied up in what looked like a series of small paper parcels. There were some paintings of scrollwork in bright colors, a rough sketch of a teenage boy on a horse, and another, more polished, of a young man lying lazily in a field smoking a cigar. At the very bottom of the box was a pile of letters, all written on thin, fragile paper, in the same large, energetic hand. Lulu drew out the topmost letter—the writing was extremely untidy but also, unlike Grandma Cissie’s, easily legible—and began to read.

Concord, July 1869.

Dearest Meg,

Will we ever learn to bear it, do you think? A world without our Beth, a family with only three sisters where there once were four? A family of cripples, in fact—for we are not whole without her, we sisters who remain, and never again shall be. We are maimed like those soldiers wounded in the War we see now-a-days limping through Concord, one without an arm or an eye, one with but a stump where once there was a stout useful leg. But, oh, my dearest Meg, how very much more badly wounded are we than even those poor unfortunates, more badly damaged than even poor blind Billy who sits with his bowl outside the Soldiers’ Home with neither arms nor legs nor eyes, for we have lost a part that was more precious than any ordinary limb. If it meant I could have my Beth back again for only a week or a day, I’d trade places with Billy for life, and think myself the richer for it.