***
Aunt Lettie was lost in her memories for several days after she told her bitter story. She wandered on her own, paying no attention to me, which allowed my regular excursions with Harrison to be accomplished with little grief from her. She’d occasionally frown should she be up when I returned home in the wee hours of the morning. I learned that at that time of day she was often awake, pacing the corridors of the house as if she were looking for something she’d lost. Her spite was undisguised, but her energy for goading me with pitiless prattle had diminished to almost nothing.
A day after my first full night with him, Harrison picked me up in the evening at seven o’clock as promised. We stopped at Virginia’s to find something appropriate for me to wear. I’d met her at one of the par
