Free My Name Is Mary Sutter by Robin Oliveira

over the soup. “Of course, your parents made plans?”
    “I don’t know.”
    What child listens? Amelia thought. Or what spouse? The end is unimaginable, therefore not to be imagined.
    “You will allow me to help you.” Amelia was past asking questions. She had another child now; in Thomas’s eyes she saw the same helplessness as she had in Jenny’s when Mary had descended the stairs, saying, Father has died , and she, Amelia, had looked into Jenny’s eyes and seen the searing likeness of her own anguish.
    “I will host the reception. And you must eat with us every day. You cannot be alone in that house.”
    Alone in that house. Jenny sprang from the table to retrieve a handkerchief. All that was left for Mary to do was to whisper to the maid to pour their guest another glass of whiskey.
    The Falls had not made plans, it turned out. At the funeral, the Sutters sat with Thomas. He was young, at twenty-two, to be left alone without uncle or aunt or cousin to help him. St. Peter’s echoed with the sounds of the organist’s mistakes. Amelia apologized for the false notes, but Thomas did not seem to notice. Amelia had chosen the Albany Rural Cemetery and arranged for a hearse to ferry the caskets up the Menands Road, with its restorative view of the Hudson River. The Falls’ graves adjoined Nathaniel’s; neighbors forever now. At the reception afterwards, the servants laid hams, cheeses, breads, and nuts on the Sutter dining-room table; black crepe draped every picture, balustrade, and door handle of the two houses. Thomas Fall drifted from one grieving circle of his parents’ friends to another.
    But it was to Jenny, with her calm demeanor and ease with his distress, to whom he turned in the days afterwards.
    Thomas Fall called often for Jenny after that. A smile for Mary, but an invitation for Jenny. He did not mean to be cruel; it was not so much a choice as it was affinity. In his grief, Jenny would not ask too much of him, while Mary, who had showed such courage after her father’s death, might expect similar strength of him.
    “Did you ask Thomas to dinner?” Mary asked her mother one day, lowering the curtain as Thomas once more escorted Jenny down Dove Street, having been both congenial and kind to Mary while he waited for Jenny to appear in the parlor. “The night I came back from the Aspinwalls’?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Did you send Jenny out to invite Thomas in?”
    “I don’t remember,” Amelia said, remembering very well. From labor to death, she thought, despite every moment at the breast, every reprimand, every tender tousle of hair, every fever fought, every night spent worrying, it came to this: you couldn’t protect your children from anything, not even from each other. “Mary, did anything happen between you and Thomas? Did he say something, insult you that day he offered you a ride home?”
    “No,” Mary said. “He was more than polite.”
    “You are certain?” Amelia asked.
    “When am I ever not certain, Mother?”
    “You know I am sorry.”
    “Don’t be, Mother. He never promised me a thing.”
    In the month following, Jenny and Thomas embarked upon walks, mostly heading west from Dove Street into the wilds that ran beyond the city. There was talk of making a park around a little lake between rocky outcroppings, like the great park Frederick Law Olmsted had designed for Manhattan. The Presbyterians might build a new church. Albany was expanding. The rumble of Southern discontent had provoked an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln to fight Stephen A. Douglas for the presidency. Even November’s cold did not turn Jenny and Thomas from their rambles. They stooped to gather fallen horse chestnuts and fingered the curved surfaces in their pockets. Their grief was a shared bond, and they spent as much time together as they could, finding a soothing happiness in one another’s company. Life seemed, suddenly, too brief for either reticence or formalities. They needed one