Chapter 24: The House on the Hill

The Fitzhugh Rehabilitation Clinic opened on the first Monday of April, in a house where I had once scrubbed the floors.

The roof had been replaced in February.

The barn had a rubber floor and a row of parallel bars.

The long hall that Joanne had used for her parties now held six padded tables.

There was a waiting list of forty-three names, mostly soldiers and linemen and one retired schoolteacher with a broken hip.

I was in the old kitchen at seven that morning, in a plain gray smock, when the first patient came through the door.

He was nineteen, with a cast on his leg and a duffel bag, and he was trying not to look afraid.

"Miss Fitzhugh?" he said.

"Wynne," I said. "Sit anywhere you like. We'll start slow."

The big table in the middle of the kitchen was still the Haldanes' table.

I had asked for it to stay, with a pad strapped across the top.

Harlan stood at the window with his cane across his arm, drinking coffee out of a thick white mug.

"I hear there's a crowd at the gate," he said.

"There's a ceremony at ten."

"I mean a different crowd."

I went out onto the porch.

The drive at Hollow Rock Farm was long and white with gravel, lined with oaks.

It ran a quarter of a mile from the gate to the house.

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