Free The Last Refuge by Marcia Talley

and Chad – had been assigned to cover the morning ablutions of The Great Patriot himself, Jack Donovan, who slept alone in the master suite directly across the hall.
    Amy returned a short time later, materializing as if by magic through the wall just to the left of my bed. A door-sized portion of the woodwork – wallpaper, wainscoting, chair rail and all – yawned open and I nearly dropped my cup. ‘Yikes!’ I squeaked. ‘You scared the life out of me!’
    Amy laughed. ‘Sorry.’ She carried a tea kettle on a flat, padded pillow, steam drifting lazily out of its spout. ‘That door leads to the service staircase. It’s a shortcut to the first floor, and to the kitchen. I thought you might want to wash up first,’ she added, heading for a washstand I had overlooked the previous evening. Carefully, she poured boiling water into a bowl in the washstand. She added cool water to it from a matching pitcher, tested the water with a fingertip, then draped a flannel cloth over the brim. ‘It’s ready whenever you are.’
    â€˜I’d kill for a cup of coffee,’ I told Amy as I dipped the flannel into the warm water, squeezed it out and applied the refreshingly warm cloth to my face. ‘A shower, too, but I realize that’s out of the question.’
    While I washed, Amy set the tea kettle down on the floor near the hidden door, just discernible as a thin crack, now that I knew where it was. She opened a leather trunk at the foot of the bed and pulled out one of my everyday gowns – an apple-green linen that I’d previously seen hanging in the wardrobe trailer with Katherine Donovan’s name on it.
    â€˜Will this dress be suitable for today, madam?’
    When I nodded, she draped the gown carefully over the arm of the chair I’d just vacated. Amy handed me a pair of stockings, a fine white silk, and knelt on the floor in front of me, ready to assist, as if I were an invalid. ‘I think I can manage,’ I said with a smile. ‘Why don’t you find my stays?’
    While Amy dug the stays out of a dresser drawer, I rolled the stockings up over my knees and secured them there with a fat elastic band. ‘Why it took until the nineteen sixties to invent panty hose, I can’t imagine. I’m hoping I don’t get gangrene below the knee in this get-up.’
    Amy watched while I stepped into the under-petticoat. After I’d tied it around my waist, she handed me the stays. I slipped the corset-like device over my head then turned so she could lace me up the back. ‘If you don’t have a maid, or a husband, you’d never get into this contraption,’ I said, regretting my words almost the moment they fell out of my mouth.
Husband
. Shit. Amy’s husband was dead.
    â€˜I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’
    â€˜That’s OK,’ Amy said, her voice hoarse. She gave my laces a final savage tug before tying them off. ‘It’s not like I haven’t
noticed
that Drew is dead.’
    I indicated a chair, the mate to the one I’d been sitting on. ‘I’ve upset you. I’m sorry. Here, sit down for a minute.’
    Amy eased her full skirts onto the chair and sat. For a long moment, she simply stared at me. Then she said, ‘It hasn’t been easy.’
    â€˜Do you want to talk about it?’
    She sat quietly for a moment, hands folded, as if weighing how much to tell me. ‘Do you know what a death notification team is, Hannah?’
    â€˜I can guess. Sounds awful.’
    â€˜It is. An official car pulls up in front of your house and an officer, a chaplain, a medic and a JAG, all in uniform, step out of it.’ She looked up at me through a film of tears. ‘Sounds like a bad joke, doesn’t it? “An officer, a chaplain, a medic and a JAG walked into a bar . . .”’ Her voice trailed off.
    â€˜I knew right away, of course.