He glances at my basket. “Are you gathering plants?”

I nod.

He bends down and picks a mayapple leaf. “What will this one do for me?”

I shrug. “Probably make you sick.”

He tosses it aside and holds out his bent arm for me to take, like he’s fixing to walk out courting with me. “We can look together if you’d like. You can show me what to look for.”

My heart’s thumping in my chest like a rabbit with the hounds after it, and I’m breathing heavy like I’m the one just got finished being chased.

He got his arm out waiting on me. “I’ll wager I’m better at this than you think. You should give me a chance.”

I take it. “Ain’t you supposed to be hammering out some horseshoes, or something?”

He grins on over at me and I smile right up into my cheeks. Lord, he does get me to act a fool.

“Aye, I am,” he nods. “But I saw you going into the woods, so I decided my blacksmithing could wait.”

There’s a thing I learned to do when I was little, where I tell myself I don’t feel what I’m feeling. I don’t miss what I’m missing. I don’t want what I can’t have. If something hurts, it’s only ’cause I’m thinking about it. Lately, I been telling myself that this thing with Henry weren’t all that much anyway.

Now, here he be, and there ain’t no way I can keep on pretending. This here with Henry is a onetime thing.

I pull a turtlehead leaf out of my basket and hold it up for him to see. “How about you help me look for some more of this.”

Here and there he points out what he thinks he found, but it ain’t right. One looks almost like it, but it’s too shiny. Another looks close, but it’s got some red on it. I never thought gathering was hard, but Henry sure don’t take to it.

I’m picking whatever I see that’s useful as I go, not just the turtlehead I told him to watch out for. When my basket’s near about full, Henry asks me if I want to see something. He’s looking at me all excited and he’s making me a little nervous, but I say “yes” because it’s Henry.

He leads me up the stream a ways more, to where there’s an old door propped up against a tree.

“Do you trust me?” he asks.

I nod, because I do, but I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t. Red’s and Bessie’s voices get mixed in with my own and I’m not sure who’s telling me to be careful. Me, or them.

Henry kicks off his shoes and pulls the wooden door into the water. He splashes in after it, holding it steady at the bank.

“Climb on,” he says.

I don’t move ’cause I can’t swim, and I know he wants to pull me right into the middle of the river.

“I promise you’ll be safe, Sarah. I won’t let you go.”