An Acquaintance with Darkness by Ann Rinaldi

only for one night."
    "Lock your doors. And remember, I am here if you need me."
    I thanked him again. He seemed distracted, as if his mind was somewhere else.
    It was. He told me just before I left that he was going to Ford's Theater that night with a doctor friend. He was looking forward to seeing the Lincolns.

8. Home Alone

    U NCLE V ALENTINE had been right. Home was dreary and dismal. My footsteps echoed in the deserted rooms. The landlord had come in my absence and taken up the rugs for cleaning. All my things were in boxes. The dust made me sneeze. I went into the kitchen and put the night-blooming cereus in a vase of water. I would put it in my bedroom. On my way upstairs I avoided the parlor, where they had laid Mama out. I would have avoided her bedroom, too, but I was missing a good shawl. I stopped in the doorway, saw the bed where she'd lain for the last six weeks, the imprint of her head on the pillow—and fled. Forget the shawl. But there were still some boxes of her things to go through. So I took them into my room.

    One box held old love letters to her from my daddy. I read them all on the floor of my room, with the dust motes floating in the late-afternoon sunbeams and the night-blooming cereus in a vase on the floor beside me. I devoured them. When I looked up finally, it was dusk, shadows everywhere. I was starved for food. That's what the love letters had done to me.
    But downstairs I couldn't find matches or candles. Finally I discovered some matches on the mantel in the dining room. Then I remembered the candles Annie had given me. I crept into the parlor. The mirrors were still covered and the cloth draping them was ghostly white. I fetched the two candles and took them into the kitchen. The parlor was not to be borne.
    The fire in the stove had gone out. There was some kindling but no paper. I searched and searched. Now what to do? No fire, no tea. I fetched the box of love letters, put them in the stove, piled the kindling on top, and watched them burn. They made a good fire. Mama would have cried, I thought, but my daddy would have said, "Good girl, that world's all over with, and you must go on." I set some water to boil, searched in the larder to see what was to be had to eat. Not much. Some cold ham and leftover hard biscuits. No milk, no butter. Hadn't there been a pot of strawberry jam this morning?

    The place was wiped clean. Maude had taken everything. Why? Because she wanted me to be miserable when I came back here. So I would flee back to Uncle Valentine's. Well, I would settle for cold ham, hard biscuits, and tea without milk. I sat down and waited for the water to boil.
    The house was so silent. I wished I had a cat or a bird. I'd had both back in Surrattsville, but Mama wouldn't let me bring them here. Annie took care of them for me. The cat had been old and died. Annie had let the bird go free. I'd always wanted to, but Mama had said no.
    Mama again. Would I never stop thinking of her? Even in anger?
    Mama was gone! The fact of it closed in on me. How could she be gone? For my whole life she had been moving about in the background, telling me what to do, complaining, plaguing me for the most part, but
there.
    Now she was gone. The quiet mocked me. I was worn down—there's the truth of it—from the last six weeks of nursing her. I was glad the drudgery was over. No more cleaning up bloodstained handkerchiefs or sheets. No more changing the bedding because she'd wet herself. No more hearing her hacking cough in the middle of the night. That's why I was unable to cry. Because I was glad it was over.

    By her own admission, she had been a selfish person. "My daddy spoiled me so." She was proud of it.
    Mama, Uncle Valentine, and Aunt Susie had grown up in a two-story frame house in Richmond. It had upstairs and downstairs galleries, and outbuildings for servants. Mama said her father was collector of the port, but I think he must have owned the port for all the money they had.