“Elizabeth always was intelligent, but not that bright. Boys, if you wish to know anything about our side of the family, ask me or her, don’t listen to some old cracker with a faulty memory.” She removed the napkin from her lap and laid it on the table. “And now that I have cleared that up for you, perhaps you could tell me, if you know, why your mother has seen fit not to communicate with me all these years? Why every one of my letters has gone unanswered? Why she has deprived me of news about the closest thing I shall ever have to grandchildren? I can understand why she would have wanted to forget Beaufort. Life here was trying for her, it was for all of us. But I was like a mother to her, and this silence of hers, it’s been cruel. It is a wound. It is a … like a … a repudiation of me. And I cannot understand the reasons for that and hope you can shed some light.”

Nathaniel wanted to answer, her plea was so heartfelt, but he was too confused; the aunt’s and the niece’s versions of the breach between them contradicted each other.

“How am I supposed to take your silence, boys?” the old woman asked. “That you don’t have an answer, or you do and are reluctant to give it to me? I am quite prepared for candidness.”

Drew, unfortunately, took her at her word and said, “Maybe it’s because you don’t like our dad.”

“Pardon me? Don’t like your father? Why should I dislike your father, Andrew?”

“On account of he’s a Yankee, and …”

“What? Young man, fifteen thousand federal troops occupied this city for four years, and while I can’t say I was fond of them as a class, I did grow used to them and found some of them to be honorable men. Why, take a look at this city of ours. It wasn’t destroyed, ravaged. I have to admit, they took rather good care of it, and there are people in the South who to this day would have my head for saying that. I considered your father a suitable match for Elizabeth. He had means, he was obviously ambitious, and I liked the way he treated that boy, that strange quiet boy.…”

“Lockwood.”

“Yes, Lockwood. He was quite devoted to him, and he was certainly taken with Elizabeth. Head over heels in love. Wrote poems to her …”

“He did?”—Nathaniel, amazed.

“Yes. You didn’t know that?”

He shook his head, feeling a pang of longing to have known his father then, before the poetry went out of him.