She orders the family to get rid of Mildred’s letters, photographs, and anything else they have in their possession that might remind them of her. It is imperative, she tells her brother, that “any documentation relative to that particular era be destroyed in its entirety since the sooner that sad episode be put behind us & forgotten once & for all, the better for all concerned.” When Christmas comes again, Harriette knows this much: she has once more found her strength. Harriette dies in 1987 at the age of ninety-four, blissfully unaware that roughly fifty years earlier, her own mother,
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