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as if she shipped hazardous gas over rough terrain. Anna had to cut into the package with a carving knife. When she got it open there was no salt-baked smell of bagels or Styrofoam peanuts heralding fragile toys. In a thick nest of folded newspaper were two bundles of letters tied up with string, and a handful of black and white pictures sealed in a sandwich baggie.
    The letters looked familiar. They were addressed in a flowing and faded hand to Peggy Broderick, Warwick, Massachusetts. Anna and Molly's grandmother had been one of eight children, six of them girls. The eldest, Anna remembered vaguely, was named Molly. She had raised their grandmother, Peggy, one of the younger children, after their mother had died. "Unknown causes" was written in the family Bible. Having borne eight kids, Anna guessed she'd just worn out.
    The letters and the pictures were in a cedar chest in the attic during the years Molly and Anna were growing up. As the eldest, Molly had inherited this scrap of family history along with the old Bible. They'd probably been moldering in a storage unit in the basement of her West End Avenue apartment building ever since. The old chest, originally a hope chest for one of the girls, had been filled with letters from a time when keeping correspondence was deemed important. These letters must be a small part of that collection.
    A crisp, buff-colored piece of notepaper embossed with the initials M.P, MD rested on top. Stationery was a weakness of Molly's. Even missives as unprepossessing as "don't forget to take out the garbage" were often scrawled on paper so rich and fine Anna could almost smell the sweat of Egyptians laboring in the papyrus.
    She took the note out and read it aloud to the cat, who'd taken the split-second opportunity as she unfolded it to leap into the open box.
    Dear Anna, On hearing you were bored and restless, Frederick reminded me how dearly you love corpses, murder and mayhem of all kinds. I'm not sure this will fill the bill but, lacking in blood and edged weapons, it's the best I could do short of coming down there and killing somebody for your amusement. The letters are to our great-great-grandmother, Peggy, from her sister, Raffia, who was married to a captain in the Union Army. For three years he was stationed on that unprepossessing sand spit upon which you've decided to maroon yourself.
    In hopes this will pass the time and keep you out of trouble-
    Love, Molly
    "Hah," Anna said. "Trouble would have to swim too far to get to me. Out you go Piedmont."
    Not willing to submit to being lifted from the box like a common pest, the cat leapt out. Having landed neatly on the coffee table, he licked a paw to indicate his stunning indifference to the box and its contents.
    Anna took out the bundles and, for reasons she wasn't sure of, sniffed them. Maybe there was the faintest scent of cedar or lavender. Because they'd been written when women wore long dresses and carried parasols, Anna's imagination might have created a memory of perfume that had evaporated a hundred years before.
    Each had the return address:
    Mrs. Joseph Coleman Wife of Captain Coleman U.S. Army Fort Jefferson
    Anna wondered if Mrs. Coleman's address could have been that simple or if she trusted Peggy to know where to write her. Anna had never had much interest in family history, in who had married whom and what year the first had sailed for America.
    Letters, handwritten letters, were different. More real because of the immediacy of connection to the hand that held the pen and, so, the mind that directed the hand.
    The string binding the bundle was new and undeserving of the care advanced to relies. Molly, in her precise academic way, had arranged the letters, probably by date, oldest last, unless some more abstruse and recondite pattern had seduced her by its mere complexity.
    Anna untied the string and draped it over Piedmont's head. The cat continued to wash as if she, the box and the string did not exist.
    Having