"'After you went I watched you admiringly as you rode along,' Libbie Custer wrote to her husband, “then I went up to my room to cry.' She remained in Washington, in a boardinghouse shared by people who alarmed her, owned by a woman who complained about the Yankees who rented the rooms. She smelled the rosebuds in the garden. She played with her kitten. And she felt the void of Armstrong’s absence.”