“Yep, and I’ve got a little sister. It’s been a few years since I’ve seen her, but last time I did, she was full of questions too.”

“How old is she?”

“Last time I checked, she was only knee-high to a grasshopper.”

Astrid giggled. “No, really. What’s her name?”

“I reckon she’s about eleven, and her name’s Ivy.”

“Since I’m nine, maybe she can be my new friend.”

“She’d probably like that.” Mr. McQuaid was quiet for a heartbeat, and the steady patter of the rain echoed in the cavern. “I’m hoping to move my family out here next summer.”

Greta sensed a wistfulness in his tone, a missing of his family. Why had he moved away from them? Was that one of the hard things he’d had to do?

It hadn’t been hard to move away from family. In fact, leaving had been more of a relief for her—and for them too. The trouble was thinking she might have to go back. She dreaded what her sisters-in-law would say if she and Astrid showed up on the farm needing a place to stay.

It would be humiliating to burden them again.

She straightened her spine. She had to find a way to make it on her own.

“I don’t think me and Greta will still be here next summer,” Astrid said, as if reading Greta’s mind. “Unless I find more gold to see us through.”

Greta smiled wryly. “I highly doubt what you found today was gold.”

“It was shiny.”

“I’m sure most of the gold lying on the surface has already been scooped up by the miners living in town. Isn’t that right, Mr. McQuaid?”

He shifted his body, clearly uncomfortable in the tight, damp space. “All the valuable land around here is claimed. Some of the mines, like Mr. Steele’s, are producing more gold than others.”

“Greta’s fiancé had a gold mine.”

“Yep. He was part owner and doing well for himself.”

“Too bad he had to die.” Astrid piled her new rock collection on Greta’s lap. “I liked him, even if he was old.”

“Astrid.”

“It’s true. He was a lot older than Thomas.”

At the mention of her best friend, Greta’s throat closed up with emotion. More than a year after his death, she couldn’t think of him without missing him.

“Who’s Thomas?” Mr. McQuaid asked.

“Greta was set to marry him, but then he went off to war and got killed.” Astrid spoke the words matter-of-factly, but to Greta, Thomas’s death from pneumonia while at training camp had been anything but matter-of-fact. It had been devastating, even worse than learning of her pappa’s fatality at the Battle of Shiloh in April.