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did not like what I did.”
    “No,” Gustie admitted.
    Jordis nodded.
    A muskrat waddled onto the road ahead of them. Gustie reined Biddie to a stop. They sat for a while, unmindful that the animal had already disappeared into the weeds on the other side of the road. The black mare tossed her head to rid herself of a fly. Gustie felt like something was about to burst inside her. She tapped the horse’s rump with the reins and they once again moved forward.
    “Why did you not like it?”
    Gustie exhaled in audible irritation, “Because it was unbecoming!”
    Jordis remained still. Only her eyes shifted sideways to look at Gustie. A smile began to take over her face until she laughed out loud. “You are a true Philadelphian, Augusta!”
    “I’m not,” Gustie said, still irritated and more so with Jordis’s laughter.
    “Oh, you are.” Jordis’s laughter subsided into a chuckle. She lightly caressed Gustie’s cheek with the back of her hand. “You are a lady. A fine lady at that.” She was no longer teasing.
    “I’m sorry,” Gustie was embarrassed, but now smiling herself, still feeling strangely disturbed.
    Jordis asked, “Tell me more about your father.”
    “Why do you want to know about him?”
    “Because I think he is important to you. I want to know about the things that are important to you.”
    Gustie had never gotten used to Jordis’s directness.
    “What did he do to make you leave Philadelphia?”
    “Nothing. He just didn’t do anything to make me stay.” The hot breath of the prairie now carried the cooler scent of Crow Kills—its fishy, intensely green smell. Gustie thought with relief how they would soon be at Dorcas’s cabin where she could have a dip in the lake before supper and then take her solitary night ride back to Charity. But Jordis took the reins from Gustie and gently drew them back. The horse stopped. Gustie, aware of the endless patience in this woman and knowing they would sit there all day if she didn’t say something, began, “Clare’s brother, Peter, was making her life miserable. She needed to get away from him. He would never have given her any peace. He made our association known to everyone in the most lurid and obscene terms. He stirred up a scandal that had social repercussions for my aunts and, possibly—I never really knew—professional ones for my father. At the least, my family must have been disappointed in me, and at the worst—humiliated. But no one said anything. Not to me or in my defense. Clare and I decided to leave Philadelphia. It was the only way for her to escape her brother and for me to get out from under all that stifling politeness.
    “I went to my father’s study. I think I was hoping he would ask me to stay. Tell me that we would weather this thing, fight it out. I thought he could have done something to put an end to Peter’s nonsense if he had wanted to.” Gustie kept her eyes straight ahead and waved away a fly. Surprised at how sharp the pain of this memory still was, she said, forcing her voice to remain unbroken, “When I told him we were leaving, all he said was, ‘You are certainly of an age to do as you please.’”
    She took back the reins and urged the mare forward again. As the wagon trail curved up a slight incline, they began to see the tops of the cottonwood trees that formed a patchy fringe around the lake. “Then he said, ‘I’ll have Fitszimmons’—that’s our banker—‘draw up an arrangement. You’ll need money...’ I didn’t let him finish. Something about the way he said that made me furious. I told him I didn’t want his money.” As they rounded the curve over the top of the rise, Crow Kills appeared, coolly mirroring the blue sky, shining like a mirage in the heat.
    “It was the only time I ever showed him much feeling. I stomped out of his study. Slammed that big oak door behind me. Clare and I left the next day. That was the last time I saw him or communicated with him until I wrote him last