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so distracted and nonsensical I feared the truth, which surely in some way she knew, must not be repeated. “You should rest now,” I said. “Sit on the bed and I’ll bring a basin to wash your feet.”
    She backed onto the edge of the bed and sat looking down at her feet, which were gray with dry, cracked mud. Dinah’s steps resounded in the hall; then she appeared in the doorway carrying a tray with a cup, saucer, and two biscuits on a plate. “I’ve saved these from the scholars,” she said pleasantly. “And I’ve brewed a nice cup of valerian tea. It will settle you.” Hannah, who usually resisted Dinah’s remedies, took the cup without comment and sipped it obediently. Dinah turned upon me a quizzical look.
    “We should wash her feet,” I said.
    A glance at the feet in question sent Dinah to the washstand.She removed the basin and filled it with water from the pitcher. Then she dropped the hand towel into it and set it on the floor by the bed. Hannah looked on distantly, unprotesting as Dinah swabbed each foot with the cloth.
    “Your father has gone,” Dinah said to me. Her tone was cautious. The extreme volatility of our patient was so obvious that the room felt like a tinderbox and one feared to strike a spark.
    “Thank you,” I said. She wrung the cloth out in the basin and went over Hannah’s feet a last time, leaving them clean and damp. “There you are,” she said. “Have you finished your tea?”
    Hannah took a last swallow, draining the cup and handing it back to Dinah. “It’s vile stuff,” she said.
    “That it is,” Dinah agreed. “But it will help you sleep.”
    Hannah glanced toward the window, where the curtain billowed in the warm breeze. “Why should I sleep?” she asked. “It’s daytime.”
    I crossed the room and pulled the shutter in, splintering the soft morning light into bright strips across the floor. “I’ll stay with her,” I said to Dinah.
    “Very well,” she said, taking up the basin. “I’ve work to do.” And she left us in the darkened room.
    Hannah drew her legs onto the bed and turned onto her side facing me. Her gaze was so unfocused I could only marvel at the efficacy of valerian. I lifted the coverlet, pulling it up to her waist as she rested her head on the pillow. “I don’t understand what Mother was trying to tell me,” she said.
    I took in a breath to keep from showing my alarm. “When?” I asked.
    “Last night,” she replied. “I woke up and she was in my room, by the window. Her back was to me, but I knew it was her.”
    “How did you know?” I said.
    “Oh, you know. Just the way she was standing. She was wearing her blue wool morning dress. I remember it so well. And I thought it odd, because it’s much too warm for a dress like that.”
    I knew exactly the dress she was speaking of; it was one ofMother’s favorites. She wore it with a pink scarf about her waist that last Christmas when we went to church.
    “I called out to her,” Hannah continued. “But she didn’t turn round. She said ‘Golden dreams,’ just the way she used to. It was her voice. Then she was gone, and I went back to sleep. But she must have come to tell me something.” Her eyes had closed as she spoke. She added a few words as darkness embraced her. “She wanted me to sleep, just like everybody else.”
    I stood by the bed looking down at her as her breath grew shallow and her lips parted softly. I brushed back a stray tendril of hair from her cheek. I think I have never been so perfectly miserable.
    Hannah was seven when Mother died, and I was thirteen. It was in the spring. Everything on earth was coming back to life, the trees disported themselves in fragrant flowers, buds pushed up sturdy green shoots through the damp soil, but my mother was wasting away. In the cemetery there were daffodils waving their gay heads in the air, and the day was bright. As her coffin was lowered into the grave, which was the only dark place in the world, or so it