The Signature of All Things

dead, and she was alive. She had sent him away to die.
    There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The griefcauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feelings. Such numbness is a kind of mercy. This is the level of grief that Alma reached, once she lifted her face from her father’s desk, once she stopped sobbing.
    She moved forward as though manipulated by some blunt, relentless external force. The first thing she did was tell her father the sorry news. She found him lying in bed, eyes closed, gray and weary, looking like a death mask unto himself. Ingloriously, she had to shout the news of Ambrose’s death into Henry’s ear trumpet before he was made to understand what had transpired.
    “Well, there goes that,” he said, and shut his eyes again.
    She told Hanneke de Groot, who pursed her lips, pressed her hands to her chest, and said only, “God!”—a word that is the same in Dutch as in English.
    Alma wrote a letter to George Hawkes explaining what had happened and thanking him for the kindness he had shown Ambrose, and for honoring Mr. Pike’s memory through the exquisite orchid book. George responded immediately with a note of perfect tenderness and polite sorrow.
    Shortly thereafter, Alma received a letter from her sister Prudence, expressing condolence for the loss of her husband. She did not know who had told Prudence. She did not ask. She wrote Prudence a note of gratitude in reply.
    She wrote a letter to the Reverend Francis Welles, which she signed in her father’s name, thanking him for conveying the sad news about the death of this most respected employee, and asking if there was anything the Whittakers could do for him in return.
    She wrote a note to Ambrose’s mother, into which she transcribed every word of the Reverend Francis Welles’s letter. She dreaded to send it. Alma knew that Ambrose had been his mother’s favorite son, despite what Mrs. Pike referred to as “his ungovernable ways.” Why would he not have been her favorite? Ambrose was everyone’s favorite. This news would destroy her. What’s worse, Alma could not help but feel that she had murdered this woman’s favorite son—the best one, the jewel, the angel of Framingham. Mailing the dreadful letter, Alma could only hope that Mrs. Pike’s Christian faith would shield her at least somewhat from this blow.
    As for Alma, she did not have the comfort of that sort of faith. She believed in the Creator, but she had never turned to Him in moments ofdespair—and she would not do so now, either. Hers was not that sort of belief. Alma accepted and admired the Lord as the designer and prime mover of the universe, but to her mind He was a daunting, distant, and even pitiless figure. Any being who could create a world of such acute suffering was notthe being to approach for solace from the tribulations of that world. For such solace, one could only turn to the likes of Hanneke de Groot.
    After Alma’s sad duties had been carried out—after all those letters about Ambrose’s death were written and posted—there was naught else for her to do but settle into her widowhood, her shame, and her sadness. More from habit than desire, she returned to her studies of mosses. Without that task, she felt she might have died herself. Her father grew sicker. Her responsibilities grew larger. The world became smaller.
    And that is what the rest of Alma’s life might have looked like, had it not been for the arrival—only five months later—of Dick Yancey, who came striding up the steps of White Acre on a fine October morning, carrying in his hand the small, worn, leather valise that had once belonged to Ambrose Pike, and asking for a private word with Alma Whittaker.

Chapter Nineteen
    A lma led Dick Yancey into her father’s study and closed the door behind them. She had never before been in a room alone with him. He had been a presence in her life since earliest memory, but he had always made her feel chilled and uneasy. His towering height, his corpse-white skin, his gleaming bald head, his icy gaze, the hatchet of his profile—all of it combined to create a figure of real menace. Even now, after nearly fifty years of acquaintance, Alma could not determine how old he was. He was eternal. This only added to his fearsomeness. The entire world was afraid of Dick Yancey, which was exactly how Henry Whittaker wanted it. Alma had never