Old Mary had played nursemaid to Arden’s girlhood. She had spent long hours sitting on the steps leading up to Addison Hall (steps that were concave even then, eroded by what her childish fancy took to be the heft and drag of learning), waiting for one parent or the other to descend, while she contemplated the building’s rough sandstone facade, as coarse and ruddy as hands chafed by years of tending to the needs of others, and her eyes passed slowly, consciously, over the serene brow of its pale limestone portico. She found comfort in the solidity of its Corinthian columns and delight in the playfulness of its arches, spires, pinnacles, crockets, its flying buttresses, Flemish-bond brickwork, fanciful stone carvings and filigreed iron fretwork. In short, she loved the place; loved it—and at this realization, she poured herself another glass of the dark wine—as she had loved no other.
