Della’s got a black eye Cecily can see, and God only knows what other injuries she can’t. “I can’t believe you’re up and moving around.”
Della pats her cheek. “Couldn’t very well miss this.”
“Gilbert told me what happened.”
“Your brother has me fixed up good. Ran to Mrs. Cowley’s for a salve.”
Cecily takes her mother’s hands in hers. “I’m so sorry, Mama. I’m so, so sorry.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, baby.”
“That’s not true,” Cecily says. “You said so yourself. I should never have come back to the quarters.”
Della shakes her head in disagreement. “You did the right thing coming back. If you hadn’t, your papa and me would have lived the rest of our days thinking you died in that fire. Moses too.”
Cecily thinks of her sisters, who will know her only through stories. “One day, when they’re older, will you tell the girls I made it out?”
Della squeezes her lips tight together. “When they’s old enough to keep a secret, we surely will.”
Cecily’s eyes begin to water, and her mother pulls her close.
“We all going to be fine,” Della whispers into her ear.
Samuel stops what he’s doing long enough to ask Cecily if she wantsto get dressed. “There’s a little room in the back where we mix up paint,” he says, pointing his head toward the far corner of the barn. “You can get changed in there.”
Cecily retrieves a lamp and the sack Gilbert gave her. “Will you come with me, Mama?” she says. “Help me get ready?”
Della follows her into the room, which is lined with jars of linseed oil, hide glue, and pigments of every imaginable hue. In the center of the room is a table with a muller and slab.
While Cecily removes Moses’s jacket and sweater and slips her dress over her head, her mother checks that the table is clean, then empties the sack onto it.
Inside is a dress and a jacket, a bonnet, a pair of satin slippers, a muff, and a valise. “Where’d Gilbert get all this?” Della asks in awe.
“It belonged to Louisa Mayo, Sara’s charge.”
“Ain’t she going to notice it’s missing?”
Cecily is surprised that, between all Gilbert’s comings and goings, he hasn’t told Della about Louisa. “She died, Mama.”
“When?”
“In the theater.”
“Lord almighty,” Della says. “He never said a word.”
The dress is made of a printed cotton—red with tiny black flower sprigs. It’s got a square neckline, with long sleeves, and the whole thing is lined in a coarse linen, which Cecily hopes will keep her warm on the cold journey.
“It looks small,” says Cecily, but as soon as Della slips the dress over her head and begins to work the buttons closed, they breathe out a sigh of relief; it’s a near-perfect fit.
“How you going to explain a dress so fine?”
“Samuel says I should tell anyone who asks that my mother is a mantua maker, and that I’m going to Philadelphia to visit my sister, who’s married to a minister.”
“A minister sounds respectable.”
“That’s what he said.”
While Cecily unlaces her muddy boots, Della examines the silk slippers, which are pale pink and trimmed in a light blue grosgrain ribbon. “These are just about the silliest shoes I ever saw,” she says as she helps Cecilyinto them. They’re a little too big, but Della finds some old rags and stuffs them in the toes.
