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"I won't be under suspicion, Uncle Valentine. I'm only going to visit my mother's grave."

"To meet Annie Surratt," he said, "brother of Johnny. Daughter of the woman whose house the detectives visited the other night, waving Lincoln's bloody shirt. No, Emily, you are not going."

"I must go. Annie needs me."

"No," he said again. "I'm sorry, but I must forbid it."

Forbid? "You have no right to forbid it."

He looked at me for a long moment. His eyes were very brown and sad. Then he sighed and got up without saying a word, went out of the room and across the hall to his office.

I sat waiting. I may have been only fourteen, but I knew by then that whenever someone says they are sorry about having to do something, they are not a bit sorry. And they have just been waiting for the right opportunity to do it.

He was back in a few minutes. Without saying a word he put a paper down gently on the table beside me.

Apparently he had gone to court—or wherever one goes to get such a paper—and had it drawn up. He had friends in high places. He knew how to get such things done.

The paper said I was underage. It had a lot of heretofores and whereases that I didn't understand. But what it said that I did understand was that I was under his jurisdiction.

Oh, it couched the message in fancy feathers. It said things about my happiness, well-being, and security. It said I needed a protector. There was even a phrase bringing Southern honor into it.

"What does this mean?" I asked him.

"That I am responsible for you." He was stirring his coffee.

"I don't need anybody to be responsible for me."

"You're only fourteen. A minor child. You need a protector."

"I can take care of myself."

"If I didn't do this, Emily, you would be in the Washington Orphan Asylum. Or St. Vincent's. Or St. Ann's Home for Foundlings. The Guardian Society in this town is very dedicated. Orphanages enlist more interest than any other charity. Do you want that? Do you want to go to an orphanage?"

I was trapped. "No," I said weakly. I sank back in my chair. I was an orphan. And it was something you weren't allowed to be. I supposed I should be grateful to him, but I wasn't. I reached into the wellspring of strength that had carried me through the last six weeks. I found it dry. I had no more strength. I felt like the miller's daughter—no, I decided, I was like Addie now.

"Come now, Emily," he was saying. "I'm not that bad, am I?"

I scowled across the table at him. "We have to have some understanding," I said to him. He nodded. "I agree."

"I can't have you ordering me around like I'm a child. I took care of Mama all that time. Since Daddy was killed."

"You did a wonderful job," he said. "And you are more mature than most girls your age. But you still need a protector, Emily. And I intend to act in that role until you are of age. I do not intend to order you around like a child. I haven't the time for it. I respect your ability to make intelligent decisions and I expect you to respect mine."

"Then why can't I go out and meet Annie today?"

"Because it is not an intelligent decision. Mobs are attacking people in the streets out there. People are running around with knives and guns. They are calling it Black Sunday, for heaven's sakes! People are frightened and angry. To say nothing of your injured foot."

I fell silent. I could see how he had always bested Mama. Why she was always angry with him. Because he was probably always right.

"So I'm like Addie, then," I said dismally. I knew I was being petulant, but I didn't care.

"Addie?"

"Yes. I met her last night."

"She can be a nusiance. Don't listen to her."

"She says she's a prisoner."

"She is not a prisoner, she is a patient. I keep her door locked, days, because she is on special medicine, and it makes her addled. She must rest. And you are not a prisoner. It is my duty to care for you. If you are angry over that, then you do not have the intelligence I have credited you with."

There was anger in his voice. It brought