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didn’t get that Holden was heading toward a nervous breakdown at all. I thought he was hospitalized because he caught a cold or pneumonia from standing in the rain watching Phoebe ride the carousel.) Flights of fancy, delusions, moody rages—those were the everyday symptoms of adolescence. I figured the month-long swoons and fevers had something to do with the limits of medicine.
    When I woke up with my thumb in the middle of the book, the dawn light pink in the window, I was frustrated. I couldn’t stand the thought of another day passing without my knowing Emma’s fate. I jumped ahead and read the last few chapters in horror. She’d run the family into irreparable debt thanks to the conniving Monsieur Lheureux (Mr. Happy!), a local merchant who exploited Madame’s weakness for fine clothes and furniture. Worst of all, this woman sleeping below me, this woman who drank pots of Constant Comment tea, was headed for the arsenic.
    Her grisly death stunned me: the vomiting, the convulsions, the nosebleeds. I never expected this ending. In her coffin, she was dressed in her wedding gown (Charles insisted), and black liquid poured from her mouth. They had to cover up the suicide, pretend it was an accident, so she could be buried in a Christian grave. For the first time, I felt genuine horror for a Heroine’s fate. I could not understand why Mother didn’t intervene. I didn’t understand the complexity of Emma’s mental troubles, and her debts seemed insurmountable. But maybe she had come to the Homestead before the real problems began. Maybe there was a chance to save her, to keep her from getting together with Léon, to warn her about M. Lheureux. I had to do something.
    That night after dinner, Mother and Emma retired to the living room, and I said good night and went upstairs. Halfway up, I stopped, my hand on the velvet striped wallpaper. I couldn’t hear much, but the name Rodolphe was pronounced with a perfect and loving accent. I tiptoed back down the steps and crossed the foyer, passing the front desk. I peeked around the wall.
    They sat with their backs to me, watching the fire. Mother was curled up on the sofa; Emma sat in the wingback chair. I crouched, then crawled across the hardwood floor, hiding behind the sofa. Through the couch upholstery, I heard Mother crunching popcorn.
    “He is so attentive and refined,” Emma said.
    “Uh-hum,” Mother said.
    “Perhaps he was worried about ruining my life. He couldn’t bear to watch someone in my position take a fall.”
    I closed one eye, nodding my head. So she’d arrived at the Homestead just after Rodolphe ditched their plan to run off together.
    “Maybe,” Mother said.
    “But didn’t he realize that I was done with all that? I don’t care about society anymore.” She held her head in her hands and pulled on her long, black curls. “Do you think he’ll return?”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t know. More popcorn?” Mother held out the bowl to Emma, who waved it away. Like most Heroines, she had little appetite.
    “How could he abandon the promise of a life of love? Of passion!”
    “Try not to worry too much right now. It’s good to distract yourself.”
    “I’m driven to distraction, thinking of Rodolphe. Why did he leave? To bury his note in a basket of apricots! I’ll never eat another!”
    My toes ached from squatting. I was getting worried; Emma had fallen into a forty-three-day swoon after Rodolphe left. Were we in for a month and a half of this?
    “I told him I’d do anything for him. I called him my king, my idol. I said I was his slave, his concubine—”
    “Maybe he had some thinking to do,” Mother said.
    “About what? What do you think he might be thinking?”
    “I have no idea what Rodolphe is thinking.”
    I nearly tipped over. Of course she knew what Rodolphe was thinking. There was an omniscient narrator. We readers had access to everybody’s thoughts. Rodolphe was dumping Emma. It was right there in Chapter 12. He was bored