CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
APRIL 1872
I sat at my desk, head in my hands. It was all getting to be too much. Despite old Mr. Reymert’s best efforts, we’d had to vacate my beloved mansion and sell off all of my lovely possessions. Gone were the crystal chandeliers, the mirrors twice the height of a man, the fine furnishings. Now we were interlopers in my sister Maggie’s modest brownstone—just as when the mill had burned so many years before—stretching it to its limits with the addition of my brood of seven.
Then Canning died. He had been ill for quite some time with a lung ailment, and when the doctor tried to cut back on his dosage of morphine in an effort to end his addiction, his body gave out. No dramatic scene ensued—no deathbed apologies or pithy final words. Canning was too ill and too in
