The Story Of Bridget Sullivan's Sofa Table:

It was surely hot in Butte Montana that day in 1948 when Bridget Sullivan breathed her last- but not as hot as the August day in 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts, when Bridget's employers Andrew and Abby Borden breathed their last. Picture poor Bridget- ordered to wash the windows in the middle of the day,  never mind the heat. Well, it was better than being in her room, the maid's room, in the attic. Surely,  like an oven it was, but all the same, over 100 degrees, the hottest day in memory, and working in the sun!

What did she see through those windows? She'd been asked that so many times, to no purpose. She started to say, on that bed in Butte, but as her doctor bent his ear low to hear her last whisper- "the table"- did she say "the table"? she passed away and left it to the ages.

She had so few things left, in that spartan room in Montana, treasures she took back to Ireland with her from that attic room in that fine house on Second Street in Fall River, then back again across the angry Atlantic and half a continent to Montana. The doctor looked at the old sofa table she had kept all those years, and couldn't see the attraction. Plain it was. Plain as the frock burned in the stove after the inquest. Plain as Lizzie,  the spinster daughter of Abby and Andrew Borden, her only friend in the world.

 The doctor's hand ran along the careworn edge of the table to a spot that seemed to be even smoother, more worn than the rest of the tabletop, as if  a lifetime of hands had paused to finger that one spot like a rosary. In the spot was an odd little dent, worn smooth but identifiable, the little corner shape of a hatchet butt.