America's First Daughter: A Novel(11)

He didn’t look back as my aunt rushed him to the little room where he did his writing. His long limbs became dead weight in my aunt’s sturdy arms. She could barely manage him; it was with the greatest difficulty that she tried to heave him into a chair. I ran to him, but my aunt blocked my way, snapping, “Leave him be, Patsy.”

Though my mother lay dead behind me, I was beset with the most frantic need to go to my father. To watch over him. To obey my mother in the last thing she ever asked of me. “Papa!”

In answer, his eyes rolled back and he collapsed into the chair.

Then Aunt Elizabeth closed the carved wooden door and I was left completely, utterly alone.





AT THE HEARTHS OF MONTICELLO, tearful slaves despaired that my mother was gone and my father might never awaken. If asked, they’d have sworn they despaired because they loved my mother and my father, and I believe that even now. But they must’ve also worried what would become of them if they lost the mistress and master of the plantation in one day. Would they be sold? Separated from one another? Scattered amongst the farms of Virginia and beyond?

Then, I understood none of this. I was too afraid for myself and my sisters, wondering what would become of us if we were left orphaned. Long after my aunt ushered us into bed and snuffed out the lanterns, my delicate little Polly cleaved to me and sobbed herself to sleep.

I couldn’t sleep, however, until I heard my father rage.

Mama always praised him for his reserved manner and thoughtful nature. But, like me, Papa hid a tempest inside. That’s why the violent orchestra of his grief from below the stairs was more soothing to me than the bone-deep drumbeat of my sad ness. Papa vented what I couldn’t unleash without incurring the ire of my proper aunt, and so I fell asleep to the sound of shattering glass and splintering wood.

It wasn’t the noise in the night that eventually awakened me, but the silence. Silence that stole into my room and pressed down cold on my chest, filling me with dread.

It was silent the way Monticello was never silent.

As if the whole plantation was afraid to breathe.

Dread skittered down my spine and brushed away the last tendrils of sleep. Pushing back the bed linens, I disentangled myself from Polly. Then I put my bare feet on the wooden floorboards and felt the early autumn chill on my legs. I glided soundlessly down the stairs, drawn inexorably to Papa’s chamber, the only room where the candles still burned bright.

I didn’t see him at first. My eyes searched him out amongst the clutter of his spyglass and surveyor’s theodolite and the other curiosities we children weren’t allowed to touch. Eventually I found him sitting on the floor, amidst the debris of his rage. He was as still as a marble bust. In profile, his strong, sharply curved jaw was clenched tight, and his eyes were fixed downward beneath a sweaty tangle of ginger hair.

I watched him for several heartbeats, and he didn’t move. He was a statue in the spell of that terrible silence. A spell I was determined to break. “Papa?”

He didn’t stir. He didn’t look up. He didn’t even twitch.

I tried again, this time louder. “Papa!”

He didn’t blink. He didn’t hear me. He didn’t see me. It was as if I was a spirit and the two of us stood on either side of an invisible divide. This wasn’t like the times my mother would tease him for letting his books swallow his attention until he forgot that he was hungry or thirsty. He wasn’t lost in a book, and the bleak look in his eyes was nothing I’d ever witnessed before—or since.

I crept closer, thinking to tug at his linen shirtsleeve.

Then I saw the pistol on the table next to him and froze.

It shouldn’t have disturbed me. I’d seen the pistol there before; I’d watched him polish it many times. But that night, in the candlelight, the notches on the shiny barrel looked like the knuckles of an accusing skeletal finger pointing at my papa. And he stared back at that pistol. He stared and stared at it, as if the pistol had, in the terrible silence, become a wicked thing.

A deadly, avenging thing.

I wanted to shout a warning but the silence had bewitched us both and the cry died dry in my throat. I could say nothing. Yet, some internal force sent me gliding toward him, my feet barely touching the floor. Almost as if I floated to his side. My hand reached out and covered the pistol before he could take it.

The smooth walnut grip felt cold and hard beneath my hand. Almost as cold and hard as my father’s bleak stare, suddenly fixed on me. I looked into Papa’s eyes and what I saw, I dare not trust myself to describe.

All at once, my father shuddered. He took a gulp of air as if he’d been drowning and pulled up suddenly from the water. “Is that my Martha?” he murmured, the spell broken. “My angel?”

“Yes,” I said, for Martha was my given name, too. But I think it was my mother he saw in me. Perhaps that was only right, for I knew it was my mother who sent me to him, who made sure I kept my promise to watch over him. Still clutching the pistol, I knelt beside him. “Yes, Papa, I’m here.”

Those were the last words we spoke that night, but we sat together for many hours, the pistol like ice in my hands, until the deathly oblivion passed. And I learned that night that the silence was not terrible. The silence was my mother’s gift to us. Ours to share. Ours alone.





FROM THAT DAY FORWARD, I stayed at my father’s side. Huddled beside the iron-fitted oak chest containing bottles of spirits, I watched Papa walk the rough-hewn wood floors, his buckled shoes clicking with each step. He was on his feet, night and day, pacing incessantly, as if some solution would present itself to undo the tragedy of my mother’s death.