“You talk like your life is at stake.” I nodded, and his smile died. He rose to his full height—still impressive, despite the skinny calves that protruded from his robe—and opened the door to the basement. “Do you want something else to wear?”

“What’s wrong with this dress?” I said and suddenly felt quite thirteen.

“There’s blood on it. We still have a few of yours, the finer ones. Mary couldn’t give them all away.”

“I’ll wear anything black.”

“Black? You haven’t worn black a day in your life.” A door creaked open on the second floor, and Virgil looked terribly sad. “I really can’t tell her?”

“Not unless you want me gone forever.”

Footsteps on the stairs. I bolted for the basement steps and closed the door behind me. Through the thin wood I heard my mother, and it was more than I could bear.

“Can’t sleep?” she said. “You were talking to yourself again.”

“I was talking to Gilda.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“I can’t help it. I never could.”

“I know, Virge.”

“I’ll be up in a minute.”

“Did you make me tea?”

“I did, but really. You should try to get back to sleep.”

She went back up the stairs. I went down.

The basement apartment was just that—a basement, overflowing and dank. The wallpaper that Hellida applied so precisely hung in strips. A family of mice had taken up residence in the nook where she made coffee.

In the corner of the room were boxes marked “Gilda.” I opened one and found a composition essay I’d written in eighth grade, on the merits of giving women the vote. My handwriting was like a seizure, awful then and awful now. The Gilda Carr who lived in this house shared my curious spellings of the words “suffrage” and “inevitability.” I thought of her, dragged beneath the milk truck. I could smell the milk, and I could feel my spine snap. I closed the box.

Virgil’s eyes avoided the boxes when he came through the room. He handed over a flimsy orange dress.

“Will it fit?” he said.

“It should.”

“You don’t remember it? We bought it just a few weeks before . . . you’d been eyeing it on the mannequin for weeks. Talking our ears off every night at dinner about how smart you would look in that first grown-up dress. You clutched the box to your chest like it was the greatest treasure in the world. You really don’t recall?”

“It wasn’t me, Virgil.”

“I doubt I was buying dresses for any other girls.”

“You bought it for Gilda, and my name is Gilda, but I’m not her, any more than you’re my father.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Precisely. I’ll explain as we walk. Your daughter . . . she isn’t coming back.”