Page 80 of A Duchess for his Family

“You were smaller. Everything appeared higher.”

Marjorie ignored this. “Papa would stand beneath us and pretend he could not see where we had gone. He would call our names and say, ‘What a dreadful mystery. I have lost both my daughters and found two very noisy birds.’”

Amelia smiled. It was a small smile at first, trembling and uncertain. Then memory warmed it.

“You always answered him,” she said.

“Because he appeared worried.”

“He was pretending.”

“I did not know that the first time.”

Sophia’s throat tightened, but she smiled with them.

“And your mother?” she asked.

“Mama said we would ruin our stockings,” Amelia replied.

“She said it every time,” Marjorie added, “but she never made us come down.”

“She brought a blanket and sat beneath the tree with her sewing.”

“And lemonade,” Marjorie remembered. “With far too little sugar.”

“It had plenty of sugar.”

“It had a respectable amount. Lemonade should not be respectable.”

Both girls laughed. The sound was different from their usual laughter. Softer, perhaps, but brighter too. Their faces seemed to open beneath the remembered sunlight of another home.

They told Sophia about their father teaching them to whistle with blades of grass and their mother pretending not to notice when they returned from the stream with wet hems. They described a summer afternoon when Marjorie climbed onto the stable roof to rescue a kitten that did not need rescuing, and another when Amelia became lost in the orchard after sitting beneath a tree to finish a chapter.

“Papa found her,” Marjorie said.

“He knew where I was.”

“He searched everywhere.”

“He searched everywhere loudly so I would hear him and answer.”

“You did not.”

“I had reached an important part.”

Sophia laughed, and Amelia’s eyes shone with pleased remembrance. For several minutes, their parents were no longer a tragedy spoken of in softened voices. They were alive in details: their father’s poor singing, their mother’s blue shawl, the smell of apples in the orchard, the muddy dog who slept beneath the nursery table despite being forbidden upstairs.

Sophia listened until she could almost see them. Then the stories slowly quieted. Amelia touched one finger to the robin’s wing.

“I miss them,” she whispered. The admission was barely louder than the leaves. Sophia set aside her sewing and opened her arm. Amelia moved into it without hesitation. She rested her head against Sophia’s shoulder, small and warm and no longer trying to appear older than eight.

“I know,” Sophia whispered.

Marjorie came closer, too, though she did so under the pretense of retrieving the pencil. A moment later, she pressed against Sophia’s other side.

“I miss them when I have adventures,” she confessed. “Because Papa always wanted to hear everything, even the parts Amelia said I ought not to tell him.”

“He usually knew those parts already,” Amelia murmured.