The Signature of All Things

guest at both events. She was helpful to the brides and polite to their grooms. Nobody saw a fissure in her.
    That said, Alma suffered.
    She had lost George Hawkes. She had been left behind by her sister and by her only friend. Both Prudence and Retta, directly after their weddings, moved across the river into the center of Philadelphia. Fiddle, fork, and spoon were now finished. The only one who would remain at White Acre was Alma (who had long ago decided that she was fork ).
    Alma took some solace in the fact that nobody, aside from Prudence, knew about her past love for George Hawkes. There was nothing she could do to obliterate the passionate confessions she had so carelessly shared with Prudence over the years (and heavens, how she regretted them!), but at least Prudence was a sealed tomb, from whom no secrets would ever leak. Georgehimself did not appear to realize that Alma had ever cared for him, nor that she might ever have suspected him of caring for her . He treated Alma no differently after his marriage than he had treated her before it. He had been friendly and professional in the past, and he was friendly and professional now. This was both consoling to Alma and also horribly disheartening. It was consoling because there would be no lingering discomfiture between them, no public sign of humiliation. It was disheartening because apparently there had never been anything at all between them—apart from whatever Alma had allowed herself to dream.
    It was all terribly shameful, when one looked back on it. Sadly, one could not often help looking back on it.
    Moreover, it now appeared that Alma would be staying at White Acre forever. Her father needed her. This was more abundantly clear every day. Henry had let Prudence go without a fight (indeed, he had blessed his adopted daughter with a quite generous dowry, and he had not been unkind toward Arthur Dixon, despite the fact that the man was a bore and a Presbyterian), but Henry would never let Alma go. Prudence had no value to Henry, but Alma was essential to him, especially now that Beatrix was gone.
    Thus, Alma entirely replaced her mother. She was forced to assume the role, because nobody else could manage Henry. Alma wrote her father’s letters, settled his accounts, listened to his grievances, minded his rum consumption, offered commentary on his plans, and soothed his indignations. Called into his study at all hours of day and night, Alma never knew exactly what her father might need from her, or how long the task would take. She might find him sitting at his desk, scratching away at a pile of gold coins with a sewing needle, trying to determine if the gold was counterfeit, and wanting Alma’s opinion. He might simply be bored, wishing for Alma to bring him a cup of tea, or to play cribbage with him, or to remind him of the lyrics of an old song. On days when his body ached, or if he’d just had a tooth drawn or a blistering plaster applied to his chest, he summoned Alma to his study merely to tell her how much pain he was in. Or, for no reason at all, he might simply wish to inventory his complaints. (“Why must lamb taste like ram in this household?” he might demand. Or, “Why must the maids constantly move the carpets about, such that a man never knows where to put his footing ? How many spills do they want me to suffer?”)
    On busier, healthier days, Henry might have genuine work for Alma. Hemight need Alma to write a threatening letter to a borrower who had fallen into arrears. (“Tell him that he must commence paying me back within the fortnight, or I will see to it that his children spend the remainder of their lives in a workhouse,” Henry would dictate, while Alma would write, “Dear Sir: With greatest respect, I ask that you bestir yourself to attend this debt . . .”) Or Henry might have received a collection of dried botanical specimens from overseas, which he would need Alma to reconstitute in water and diagram for him swiftly, before they all rotted away. Or he might need her to write a letter to some underling in Tasmania working himself halfway to death at the far reaches of the planet in order to gather exotic plants on behalf of the Whittaker Company.
    “Tell that lazy noodle,” Henry would say, tossing a writing tablet across the desk at his daughter, “that it does me no good when he informs me that such-and-such a specimen was found on the banks of some creek whose name he has probably invented himself, for all I