Free America's First Daughter: A Novel by Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie

public service when all my private happiness has been so utterly destroyed?”
    Colonel Randolph swallowed and Mrs. Randolph fluttered her fan. In the astonished silence, Papa’s cheeks reddened. He’d been goaded into expressing his darkest thoughts and his embarrassment pained me like a hot stone in my belly. Some part of me had hoped the Randolphs would see my papa’s devastation, that they’d realize he was a man on the edge of something . . . terrible, but their silence was excruciating.
    Young Tom had been slumped in his chair, trying to affect an air of manly indifference. But now he perked up, sitting straighter. “I’d like to serve in public office one day, Mr. Jefferson.”
    I didn’t know if Tom blundered forth in self-interest or to ease the tension, but his question gave my father a moment to recover. His mother flashed him an adoring smile of appreciation, and the gratitude I felt toward Tom made me forget I’d ever disliked him.
    “You’ll need an education,” Papa suggested. “You’ll want to study law—”
    “He’ll study how to plant tobacco,” Colonel Randolph barked. “There’s good reason gentlemen are withdrawing from public life, my friend. Retire to Monticello, plant your crops, and enjoy the fruits of your labor. That’s my advice to you.”
    Despite the colonel’s provocation, it seemed good advice to me; certainly, it was what Mama had wanted. And, in the days that followed, I hoped Papa would be persuaded by it. But on the day the Randolph sisters coaxed me to play with them and their dollies in the springtime sunshine, Papa saw me laughing and his gaze filled with an even deeper melancholy.
    That night he didn’t sleep. He paced the floors of his room, then came into mine. I think he knew I’d be awake. Gently brushing my hair from my face beneath my sleeping cap, he asked, “Could you be happy here, Patsy? With the Randolphs?”
    The question was mildly spoken, but his eyes had a mad intensity to them. Both sent my heart into a breath-stealing sprint. Was it a rebuke? Did he think I’d forgotten my mother? Did he consider my laughter a dishonor to her memory? My stomach knotted in guilt, and I bunched the quilt in my fists. “No.”
    “The schoolhouse here,” he said softly. “Your grandfather built it. Judith and Nancy are suitable playmates, and Tom might even make a good husband for you one day.”
    “ No, Papa,” I insisted, my fears rising. “I couldn’t be happy here. Not without you.”
    “You might be—”
    “It’s not true, Papa.” Now anger swirled with fear inside me, forcing me to cry, “I can only be happy with you!”
    “It’s only that circumstances might take me . . . elsewhere for a time.” He sighed with a gravity that made me recognize it as a plea. Even if he could hide it from the rest of the world, he couldn’t hide from me his longing for death. It was in the spaces and silences between his words that the truth could be found.
    I heard it in what he didn’t say.
    And I determined never to give him an excuse to take his leave of this world. “I’d be miserable here, Papa. I find the Randolphs entirely disagreeable. Wherever your duty takes you, it must take me, too.”
    For the memory of my mother could not be honored, my promises could not be kept, and my own duty could not be met anywhere else.
    Only when his shoulders sagged in resignation, and he pressed a tender kiss to my brow, did my heart finally calm within my chest. The next morning, I shied away from Judith and Nancy, instead following Mrs. Randolph past the schoolhouse into her orderly herb garden. There, in the striped linen short gown and straw hat she wore for gardening, she let me help her tend the raspberry and sweet goldenrod she used to brew her liberty tea. “I suppose now that the war is over, we’ll drink the real stuff again. But my boy Tom has been kind enough to pretend he’s fond of my concoction and I dare say your father likes it, too.”
    The warm