A Novel of Grief, Ghosts, and Becoming
PROLOGUE — The Candle and the Veil
The candle burned low in the Red Room, its flame trembling as though afraid of the dark gathering around it. Mary Todd Lincoln sat motionless before it, her hands hovering above the table, her breath shallow, her eyes fixed on the wavering light.
Outside, the winter wind clawed at the windows.
Inside, the silence pressed close, thick as velvet.
“Willie…” she whispered.
The flame bent toward her, as if listening.
In that moment, Mary felt the veil thin — felt the world she knew stretch, tremble, and open like a seam. She felt the presence of her son, the echo of his laughter, the warmth of his small hand in hers.
But the dead do not come from nowhere.
They come from memory.
From longing.
From the shadows of a life shaped by loss.
And Mary’s shadows began long before the White House — long before the war — long before the séances and the whispers and the grief that hollowed her.
Her ghost story began in a house of music and shadows, in a childhood gilded with privilege and haunted by silence.
It began in Lexington.
It began with a mother’s hands.
It began with a death.
EPIGRAPH I
“Some houses remember.
Some houses grieve.
And some houses keep their ghosts.”
— Kentucky proverb
EPIGRAPH II
“A child’s first haunting is often the loss of a mother.”
— Anonymous, 19th‑century diary fragment
CHAPTER ONE — Where Her Ghost Story Begins
The Todd mansion stood on Main Street like a grand, brooding sentinel — three stories of red brick and white trim, its tall windows gleaming in the morning sun like watchful eyes. The house was elegant, yes, but beneath its polish lay a stillness, a depth, a sense that the walls themselves were listening.
Inside, the air carried the scent of beeswax polish, coal smoke, and lavender water. The floors gleamed with such care that the reflections of passing figures shimmered like ghosts. Servants moved through the halls with practiced quiet, their footsteps softened by thick carpets imported from the East. Portraits of stern ancestors lined the walls, their painted eyes following the children as they ran past.
And the children did run.
The Todd household was a small universe of motion and noise: laughter echoing down staircases, the thud of hurried footsteps, the rustle of skirts, the clatter of dropped toys. The mansion, for all its grandeur, felt alive.
But even in its liveliness, the house held shadows — long, reaching shadows that pooled in corners and stretched across hallways as though waiting for someone to notice them.
Mary noticed them.
Even as a child, she felt the house watching her.
The Mother of Light
At the center of this world was Mary’s mother, Eliza Parker Todd.
Eliza moved through the home with a softness that warmed every room she entered. She had a way of smoothing a collar, brushing a curl from a forehead, or adjusting a ribbon that made the world feel safe. Her presence softened the edges of the house, turning its grandeur into something gentle.
In the evenings, she played the piano in the parlor — a room of pale blue walls, tall windows draped in silk, and a chandelier that caught the lamplight like a cluster of stars. Eliza’s fingers drifted across the keys with a quiet tenderness that made the entire house pause.
Mary would sit cross‑legged on the rug, tracing patterns in the carpet while the notes drifted around her like warm light.
“Again, Mama,” she would whisper.
Eliza smiled — always with her eyes first — and played the melody once more. Mary leaned her head against her mother’s knee, feeling the vibration of each note through the floorboards. She didn’t know she was storing the sound away like a keepsake — something she would cling to long after the music itself had vanished.
To Mary, her mother was not just a parent.
She was the sun.
The center.
The warmth that made everything else make sense.
Mirrors and Shadows
There was a tall mirror in the upstairs hallway — a gilt‑framed thing imported from France, its surface so polished it reflected the world with unsettling clarity.
Mary avoided it.
Sometimes, when she passed it at dusk, she thought she saw movement in the reflection — a flicker of shadow, a shift of light, something that didn’t match the world behind her.
Once, she paused before it, her small hand reaching toward the glass. Her reflection stared back — wide‑eyed, solemn, too still.
Behind her, the hallway stretched long and dim.
In the mirror, it seemed even longer.
“Mama says mirrors remember,” she whispered.
And the mirror seemed to listen.
The Children of the House
The Todd children were a constellation — each bright, each different, each orbiting around their mother’s warmth.
Elizabeth, Frances, and Ann, the older sisters, hovered protectively around Mary. They braided her hair, read to her from their schoolbooks, taught her French phrases, and let her tag along even when she was too young.
The younger children were whirlwinds of energy. They raced down hallways, hid behind velvet drapes, giggled during lessons, and whispered secrets long after bedtime. Their laughter echoed through the house like bells — bright, chaotic, alive.
Mary was right in the middle — old enough to help, young enough to play, sensitive enough to feel every shift in the air.
The house was noisy, chaotic, joyful.
But beneath the laughter, there was always a faint tremor — a sense that the harmony of the household depended entirely on one woman’s presence.
And Mary, even as a child, sensed it.
The Storm
The night the storm rolled in, the sky turned the color of bruised violets. Thunder rumbled across the horizon like distant cannon fire. The wind pressed against the windows, making the glass tremble.
Mary stood at the parlor window, watching the trees bend and sway. The piano sat silent behind her, its keys gleaming faintly in the lamplight.
Her mother had been in bed for two days.
The storm felt like an omen.
A warning.
A breath held too long.
When lightning flashed, Mary saw her reflection in the window — pale, wide‑eyed, ghostlike. For a moment, she didn’t recognize herself.
The Day the Music Stopped
Eliza had just given birth to her fourteenth child — a tiny baby boy named George. The house buzzed with excitement, servants rushing about, siblings whispering eagerly. But Mary felt something else. A heaviness. A stillness. A wrongness that settled in her stomach like a stone.
That night, she stood in the dim hallway clutching her doll. The gas lamps flickered, casting amber pools of light that made the shadows seem to breathe. A door creaked open. Elizabeth stepped out, wiping her eyes quickly.
“Is Mama sleeping?” Mary whispered.
Elizabeth knelt, forcing a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “She’s… resting, darling.”
But Mary saw the fear in her sister’s trembling hands.
Her mother lay pale and trembling in her bed, fever burning through her body. Mary wasn’t allowed inside, but she stood in the hallway, gripping the banister so tightly her knuckles turned white. Doctors whispered behind closed doors. Her older sisters cried quietly in corners. Her father paced the hallway, boots striking the floor with sharp, anxious echoes.
Hours passed.
Then a day.
Then another.
The fever worsened.
The newborn cried in the next room — a thin, desperate sound that cut through the silence like a blade.
And then… silence.
The doctor stepped into the hallway, face pale, spectacles fogged. Robert Todd stood rigid, hands clasped behind his back.
“It’s over,” the doctor whispered.
Robert’s jaw tightened. His eyes closed for a single, fragile second — the only moment he allowed himself to break. Then he straightened, spine stiffening, grief swallowed whole.
Mary watched from the staircase.
Later, she slipped into her mother’s room. The curtains were drawn. The air was still. Her mother’s hand — once warm and soft — was cold.
Mary touched it anyway.
“Mama… please wake up.”
But Eliza Parker Todd would never wake again.
And the warmth of the Todd home vanished with her.
A House Hollowed by Grief
After Eliza’s death, the mansion didn’t simply grow quiet — it grew hollow. The rooms felt larger, emptier, as though the walls themselves had pulled back in mourning. The piano sat untouched, its keys gathering dust. The air felt colder, even in summer.
Shadows lengthened.
Floorboards creaked at odd hours.
Mirrors seemed to darken around the edges.
Mary began waking in the night, certain she heard footsteps in the hallway — soft, slow, hesitant. When she opened her door, the corridor was empty, the lamps flickering as though someone had just passed.
Robert moved through the house like a figure carved from stone: shoulders rigid, jaw clenched, eyes fixed straight ahead. He mourned the only way he knew how — silently, rigidly, alone.
One night, Mary wandered past his study. The door was cracked open. Inside, Robert sat at his desk, head bowed over a letter he wasn’t writing. His shoulders shook once — a single, silent tremor. By the time he opened the door, his face was stone again.
Mary hid behind the corner, watching him walk past without seeing her.
Within months, he remarried.
To Mary, it felt like betrayal.
The Winter That Moved In
Elizabeth “Betsey” Humphreys Todd arrived at the mansion like a winter wind — sharp, brisk, impossible to ignore. She carried herself with rigid posture, chin lifted, eyes sharp as glass. Her footsteps echoed with purpose. Her voice cut through the air like a blade.
She was everything Eliza was not: strict, formal, emotionally distant, obsessed with propriety.
On her first day, she stepped into the foyer and surveyed the house with a critical eye. Mary clutched her sister’s hand. Betsey’s gaze landed on her.
“You must learn to stand straighter,” she said, adjusting Mary’s posture with two firm fingers.
Mary flinched. No one had ever touched her like that.
Betsey brought several children of her own. They entered the Todd mansion quietly, almost cautiously, like guests unsure if they were welcome. They were reserved, watchful, disciplined, unfamiliar with laughter.
At dinner, they sat stiffly, hands folded neatly in their laps. The Todd children shifted uncomfortably. Mary reached for a biscuit.
“Use your left hand,” Betsey said sharply.
Mary froze. The silence was suffocating.
A House Divided
The mansion grew colder. The piano sat silent. The laughter faded. The hallways felt longer, darker, emptier.
One evening, Mary slipped into the parlor and pressed a single piano key. A soft, trembling note.
“That is not appropriate at this hour,” Betsey said from the doorway.
Mary’s hand fell away from the keys.
She learned to navigate the new household like a battlefield: watching, listening, anticipating, adapting. She learned to hide her feelings behind a practiced smile. She learned to swallow her grief before anyone could see it. She learned to sharpen her wit like a blade.
In her bedroom, she stood before the mirror, smoothing her dress. She practiced a smile — small, polite, unbreakable.
“Be strong,” she whispered.
And the girl in the mirror obeyed.
Storms at the Dinner Table
At dinner, political arguments erupted like summer storms — slavery, states’ rights, the future of the country. Voices rose. Tempers flared. Lines were drawn.
Mary sat quietly, absorbing every word. Politics became her second language. She learned how to read a room, how to sense tension before it broke, how to speak with precision — or stay silent with purpose.
She was a girl born into privilege… but shaped by grief.
A girl surrounded by luxury… but haunted by loneliness.
A girl raised in a mansion… but living in the shadows of her own home.
She once wrote that she was taught to appear strong, “even when my heart was breaking.”
And that mask — polished, practiced, unyielding — would follow her for the rest of her life.
CLOSING VIGNETTE — The Breath on the Glass
One winter night, long after the lamps had been extinguished, Mary crept to the parlor. The moonlight spilled through the tall windows, silvering the piano, the chairs, the silent room.
She approached the window and pressed her palm to the cold glass.
Her breath fogged the pane.
For a moment, she imagined another breath meeting hers from the other side — warm, familiar, comforting.
Her mother’s breath.
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them, the fog on the glass had formed the faintest shape — a curve, a line, something that could have been nothing…
…or could have been a handprint.
Mary stepped back, heart pounding.
The house was silent.
The shadows were long.
The air felt heavy with memory.
She whispered into the darkness:
“Mama… are you still here.”
The silence did not answer.
But it did not feel empty.
Not anymore.
FINAL PARAGRAPH — The Foreshadowing
Outside, far beyond the quiet streets of Lexington, a young lawyer in Illinois was rising before dawn, straightening his worn coat, and stepping into a life he did not yet know would collide with hers. He was tall, awkward, brilliant, restless — a man shaped by his own shadows, his own griefs, his own ghosts.
Mary did not know his name.
Not yet.
But the world was already shifting toward him, drawing two distant lives onto the same path.
And in the silent parlor of the Todd mansion, with her breath fading from the glass, Mary Ann Todd took her first step toward the future that waited for her — a future that would bind her to that man forever.
