Maria whispered from the stretcher upon which she was being carried. “Your momma never has to holler to get anyone to do her bidding. She just fixes you with that sensible gaze, speaks in dulcet tones, and you’re simply overcome by the superiority of her rank.”
I was so unbearably relieved to hear my sister in good humor that I didn’t take umbrage. And more relieved to see Sally come running out into the dreary spring weather to greet our ragtag band of refugees. I’d sent word ahead, so she’d made up a bed for my sister on the main floor, complete with budding spring flowers in a vase on the side table. Wearing an old housedress with her dark hair braided straight down the back, Sally took the children from my arms, then helped me wash my sister of the sweat and grime of our journey before tucking her into bed.
“You’re giving us a terrible fright,” Sally scolded my sister.
“Papa,” my sister said, softly. “Is he . . .”
“He’s riding from Washington City right now,” Sally said. “So we can have a happy reunion.”
“Is Papa coming?” my sister asked, as if she hadn’t heard.
Sally and I did everything for her, in silent conspiracy that no one else should. When my father finally arrived, Maria wanted to be dressed and upright. For twelve days, every morning she woke up and declared that she was on the mend. But on the twelfth night, her fever burned so hot and her pain was so great that she couldn’t speak without her lips trembling on every word.
That’s when she pleaded with Sally and me to dose her with double the laudanum. I knew then that she was dying, well and truly. So did Sally, who looked to me, those hard amber eyes finally softening with anguish. It was Sally who had seen my sister safely across an ocean. Sally who was, in some ways, a sister to her, too.
But I was the one who held the bottle of laudanum.
“Please,” my sister begged, writhing in pain. And when I gave it to her, she sighed softly at my brimming tears. “Courage, Patsy. We mustn’t cry. We must be of good cheer. Our papa is burdened with such sorrows that we must never burden him with our own.”
Those words broke my heart.
Snapped it in two.
For they were my words, spoken after my mother’s death, when we were both still little girls. Words I hadn’t thought she remembered. Heavy words that I had pressed on her delicate shoulders and made her carry all her life.
And they were also the last words I ever heard my sister say.
SALLY AND I WERE BOTH WITH MY SISTER in the early morning, when the nightmare scene of my mother’s death played itself out again. The frail and delicate beauty, pale and gasping upon her pillow. The grieving husband, weeping against her hand. Hemings servants gathered round. And me—in my Aunt Elizabeth’s place—holding my sister’s newborn daughter at the precise moment she was made an orphan in my arms.
The nostalgic horror of it all sent my father stumbling back, fleeing into another room while weeping into his handkerchief. But I stood there, deaf and dumb as a stone while everyone else wept. I couldn’t accept the loss of my sister—my beloved sister—who was my child before I had any others.
My little Polly.
The loss of her couldn’t be borne. And I couldn’t make myself let go of her baby when Jack reached for the child. Jack wanted his daughter. It was only natural. His wife was dead and this baby, her namesake, was a living connection to her. So I ought not to have hated him for tearing the infant away from me.
But I did. Oh, I hated Jack Eppes.
And when he took that child from me, I thought my knees might buckle. But Sally’s hand slipped into mine, squeezing tight, as if to keep me upright. And we stood there by Polly’s bed like two honor guards, determined that no one else but us would prepare my sister for burial.
I washed her hair, dried it, then combed it to the grim music of the carpenter’s hammer outside, as he made her coffin. Sally found a pretty dress for my sister to wear. I gathered a bouquet of spring flowers and returned to find Sally mending my sister’s garments in the places they’d been worn, swiping at her eyes so that she could see her own needle.
They were all crying. The servants. The menfolk. The children.
But I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry because my sister had bade me not to. I didn’t cry when they put my sister in her coffin. I didn’t cry when they lowered her into the ground near my mother. I didn’t cry when they shoveled dirt on top of her.
Nor did I cry when my father clutched at me by the fireplace, murmuring, “I’ve lost the half of all I had! Now it all hangs on the slender thread of a single life. On you, Patsy. Only you.”
He no longer had the strength, I think, to rage violently in his grief. There’d be no smashed glass, no overturned lamps, no splinters of tables left in his wake. And no pistols, so long as I was there. It was as it had been at the beginning. Papa and I were forged together in sadness, and were still forged, such that no other person in this world was so dear. My life, too, was suspended by the slender thread of his. So I understood the truth of what he was saying.