Sublime

She reads Thoreau over wood fires at night.

Henrietta died the day they sent Elsie away, that losing her was worse than anything else that happened to her. Now, nearly a year later, Henrietta still had Day or a cousin take her from Turner Station to Crownsville once a week to sit with Elsie, who’d cry and cling to her as they played with each other’s hair.

freshman year, the year Jane’s grandmother died and Jane moved with her mother and sister into her grandmother’s house in Awadapquit.

Maybe Ma was never coming home.