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woodenly toward the kitchen. There I found Uncle Valentine, Maude, and a strange young man who reminded me of Johnny. My heart lurched. He wasn't Johnny, of course, but I didn't need anybody reminding me of him now. So I resented the young man on the spot.
    "A million Northern men can now come home,"
he was saying to Maude. "That's what it means, this surrender."

    Uncle Valentine hugged me, long and hard. "Are you all right?"
    "Yes." I blushed under his concern. But it was good to be hugged.
    "I don't like those circles under your eyes. Maude says you've slept. What is it, headache? You need to eat. And have some coffee. Then I'll give you something for the head." He pulled out a chair for me, and I sat down. The young man had gotten to his feet.
    "Robert," Uncle Valentine said, "this is my niece, Emily Bransby Pigbush."
    I saw that the mouth was fuller than Johnny's, the nose longer. But there was something of Johnny in the high cheekbones, the determined thrust of jaw.
    "Please accept my condolences for your loss," he said. His eyes were very brown. And they had a look about them. Confused, and yet knowing. Like he'd just gotten up from the battlefield after being hit by a mortar shell.
    "My name is Emily Pigbush," I told him. Might as well get that cleared up right off. "Uncle Valentine likes to add Bransby to fancy it up. Because Pigbush is so silly sounding." I was rambling, and I didn't know how to stop. "Everyone's teased me about my name ever since I can remember. Back in Surrattsville, in school, I finally got used to it. It doesn't plague me anymore. There was a girl in school there who had a worse name than mine. It was Fealegood. It's spelled
F-e-a-l-e,
but you can imagine the jokes the boys made."

    "I can, yes," he said.
    "I'd rather be a Pigbush than a Fealegood." I didn't tell him that my father used to call me Miss Muffet. That was my secret, not to be shared.
    I stopped. They were all staring at me. I wanted to run and hide, but my head was pounding and I needed some coffee.
    Robert poured some for me. Then he got up and went about the table heaping a plate of food. I noticed, right off, how he half dragged, half limped with his right leg. "When I was in school in Pennsylvania I had a friend named Goatarm," he said. He handed the plate to me.
    I took it and started eating ravenously. Only then did I pay mind to the white tablecloth, Mama's good dishes, the display of food. Fresh-baked biscuits, ham, fish, and eggs, fresh fruit, fruit preserves, coffee. I was dazed. I wondered how these people had come to be sitting at our breakfast table, talking so amiably, when my mama had just died and the undertakers who had worked miracles on little Willie Lincoln were taking her away to do unspeakable things to her.

    "Where did all this food come from?" I asked.
    "There's more in the larder," Maude said. "From your neighbors, the women your mama worked with, and your uncle. Eat."
    "My head hurts."
    Uncle Valentine made a movement toward a bag on the floor, took something out, and set it down by my plate. A powder. Robert gave me a glass of water.
    I took it and swallowed the powder.
    They started talking again. "A group of wounded soldiers were surrounded by crowds on E Street this morning," Robert said, "and made to recount their war experiences. Then the people hugged them and stuffed their pockets full of greenbacks. And I saw three effigies of Jeff Davis hanging from lampposts on my way here this morning."
    "Fireworks popped all night," Maude said. "The whole city needs headache powders."
    They compared notes about the revelry. I had the feeling they were talking just to fill in the spaces, talking around what needed to be said.
    They were. "Come and live with me, Emily," Uncle Valentine said finally.
    Maude and Robert looked uncomfortable.
So they know,
I thought. "I've already promised the Surratts."
    "Valentine isn't a bad person to live with," Robert said. "He coughs a lot, mornings, and comes in all hours of