The Signature of All Things

botanical importing concern, or a busy pharmaceutical manufacturing operation? What need did she have to own half a dozen mills and mines across Pennsylvania? What use did she have for a thirty-four-room mansion filled with rare treasures and a challenging staff? How many greenhouses did one lady botanist need in order to study mosses? (That answer, at least, was simple: none.) Yet it was all hers.
    After the solicitor left, Alma, feeling stunned and self-pitying, went to find Hanneke de Groot. She longed for the comfort of the most familiar person left in the world to her. She found the old housekeeper standing upright inside the large, cold fireplace in the kitchen, poking a broom handle up into the chimney, trying to unloose a swallow’s nest, while unleashing upon herself a coating of soot and grime.
    “Surely someone else can do that for you, Hanneke,” Alma said in Dutch, by means of greeting. “Let me find a girl.”
    Hanneke backed out of the fireplace, huffing and filthy. “Do you think I haven’t asked them to?” she demanded. “But do you think there is another Christian soul in this household who would stick their neck up a fireplace chimney except me?”
    Alma brought Hanneke a damp cloth to wipe clean her face, and the two women sat down at the table.
    “The solicitor has left already?” Hanneke asked.
    “Gone just these five minutes ago,” Alma said.
    “That was swift.”
    “It was a simple business.”
    Hanneke frowned. “So he left it all to you, then, did he?”
    “Indeed,” said Alma.
    “Nothing to Prudence?”
    “Nothing,” said Alma, noticing that Hanneke had not asked after her own interests.
    “Curse him, then,” Hanneke said, after a moment’s silence.
    Alma winced. “Be kind, Hanneke. My father is not a day in his grave.”
    “Curse him, I say,” the housekeeper repeated. “Curse him as a stubborn sinner, to disregard his other daughter.”
    “She would not have accepted anything from him anyway, Hanneke.”
    “You do not know that to be true, Alma! She is part of this family, or should be. Your much-lamented mother wanted her to be part of this family. I expect you will look after Prudence yourself, then?”
    This took Alma aback. “In what manner? My sister scarcely wishes to see me, and she turns away all gifts. I cannot offer her so much as a teacake without her claiming it to be more than she needs. You cannot honestly believe she would allow me to share our father’s wealth with her?”
    “She is a proud girl, that one,” Hanneke said, with more admiration than concern.
    Alma wished to change the subject. “What will White Acre be like now, Hanneke, without my father? I do not look forward to running the estate without his presence. It feels as though a great, living heart has been ripped out of this home.”
    “I will not permit you to disregard your sister,” Hanneke said, as though Alma had not spoken at all. “It is one thing for Henry to be sinful, stupid, and selfish in his grave, but another thing altogether for you to behave the same way in life.”
    Alma bristled. “I come to you today for warmth and counsel, Hanneke, yet you insult me.” She stood up, as if to leave the kitchen.
    “Oh, sit down, child. I insult nobody. I only mean to tell you that you owe your sister a significant debt, and you should see to it that debt is paid.”
    “I owe my sister no debt.”
    Hanneke threw up her arms, still blackened with soot. “Do you see nothing , Alma?”
    “If you refer, Hanneke, to the lack of warmth between Prudence and myself, I urge you not to lay the blame for it exclusively upon my shoulders. The fault has been every bit as much hers as mine. We have never been at ease in each other’s society, the two of us, and she has warded me off, all these many years.”
    “I do not speak of sisterly warmth. Many sisters have no warmth with each other. I speak of sacrifice. I know everything that occurs in this house, child. Do you imagine you are the only one who ever came to me in tears? Do you imagine you are the only one who ever knocked on Hanneke’s door when sorrow overwhelmed? I know all the secrets.”
    Bewildered, Alma tried to imagine her aloof sister Prudence ever falling into the housekeeper’s arms in tears. No, it could not be pictured. Prudence had never had Alma’s closeness with Hanneke. Prudence had not known Hanneke from infancy, and Prudence did not even speak Dutch. How could intimacy exist at all?
    Still, Alma had to