I later found that the short story had been taken from an unpublished novel manuscript, written and rewritten several times in the 1950s, called Rachel Benson (or, alternatively, Bedroom with a Skylight). However, on a second read I recognized details-the nickname Horrors, the malapropisms of the title character-that convinced me it was indeed hers. When I read “Julio at the Party,” an onionskin manuscript held together with a rusty paper clip and folded in half, tossed in a box of artifacts, books, and papers, I thought at first that the story must be by some other writer who had given it to her in a class, or over tea or coffee for comment. It’s taken time to organize and inventory those materials, and it’s also been a considerable emotional journey for me to read, assess, and come to the decision that these stories should be shared publicly. When my grandmother died in 2007, there were papers and manuscripts distributed among three different houses and an office. The sadness of the story-and its unresolvedness-shook me and gave me a glimpse at the depth of things we might discover about the people we love. The story was strange to me, and sad, and although the girl in the story was named Claudine, I understood it to be autobiographical. I’m not sure why I stopped to read this particular one, but I liked the French name in the title, and the imperative. I came across “Gilberte Must Play Bach” in one of those. There were dozens of boxes and binders, including ones with A Wrinkle in Time, The Arm of the Starfish, and A Wind in the Door written on them, but I wasn’t interested in the manuscripts of stories that could be read as real books: I was more curious about the scraps and stories and studies in the other boxes. The manuscripts I was poking about in were housed in repurposed ream boxes with words like “Eaton” and “Corrasable Bond” on the sides, and in black three-ring binders whose leather casings were beginning to crack. I’m not sure who christened it “the Tower,” but the name was used ironically by both her and the rest of the family, an acknowledgment of the privilege of solitude and time. The Tower was just a room over the garage in the eighteenth-century New England farmhouse where she and my grandfather had lived and raised three children during the 1950s and where they still spent weekends, holidays, and long stretches of summer. I was about nine years old, curiously but quietly poking about my grandmother Madeleine L’Engle’s manuscripts so as not to disturb her writing and risk losing the privilege of keeping her company in her “Ivory Tower” while she worked.

Prelude by Madeleine L'Engle