Letter from Mary Jefferson to “M”, July 22

Dear M,

I must admit that I haven’t been enjoying myself here at camp as much as I had been previously. The root of this is quite plain to me. A is having horrible nightmares, and it seems that nothing I can do will ease them.

It started out with me waking occasionally to her crying in her sleep. Her cries have now become terrified whimpers, or even calling out. We agreed to push our beds close to one another, in the hopes that it would make both of us sleep better. But while my nightmares (more on that later) have abated, hers seem to have become even worse than before. She wakes up crying, sometimes with words, sometimes not.

This morning, she woke and told me, fervently, that I must stay away from the...

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