“To San Francisco, in the States, missus, by way of Fiji and the Hawaiian Islands.”

Bliss sighed. San Francisco, the city she had dreamed of so often. “That’s wonderful. You’ll see such grand sights.”

“I will at that,” Sam agreed. Then, with great ceremony, he took a watch from his pocket and opened the case. “Got to go, now, missus. When the train comes through from Wellington, I’d best be at the station with my ticket in hand.”

Bliss gave him a letter she’d written to her mother, along with a few coins, and he promised to mail it as soon as he stepped off the ship.

When Sam had rumbled away in his hired wagon, the house seemed bigger and much emptier. Bliss looked in on Peony, who was sleeping fitfully, and then went outside to free Caesar from his washtub prison.

He ruffled his feathers, squawked once, and strutted away, a changed rooster.

That task tended to, Bliss put her hands on her hips and looked out at the surrounding green hills, trying to guess where the flock might be, hoping to see a curl of smoke twisting against the sky.

At sunset, she fed the chickens and the barn animals before coming inside to light lamps and make sure the doors and windows were soundly locked. She was frying potatoes and onions at the stove when Peony came in, looking worse than she had earlier.

“Have you heard from Jamie yet?” she asked pitiably.

Bliss shook her head, thinking to herself that life certainly had its odd twists and turns. Here she was, cooking supper for a woman who might well have been her husband’s mistress. “Sit down,” she said.

Peony obeyed, keeping to the edge of her chair. She smiled wanly when Bliss set a pot of fresh tea in front of her, along with a clean cup and saucer and a bowl of sugar.

“I’m afraid we haven’t any milk,” Bliss apologized. “I’d have sworn there was a cow in that barn when I got here.”

Peony poured herself a cup of tea and added sugar, still smiling. Bliss thought it was remarkable that she could do so, after what she’d suffered. “Jamie told me that he found you sleeping in the hay, but I thought he was just spinning one of his yarns.”

Bliss added eggs and a tin of hash to the concoction she was frying, stirring them in vigorously. Now that it was dark outside, she missed Jamie even more keenly. “Tell me,” she ventured, without meeting Peony’s eyes, “how you met him.”

Peony was silent for a long moment. “If Jamie didn’t tell you,” she answered finally, “I’m not sure I should.”

Bliss got two plates from the shelf and set them on the table with resounding thumps. “That’s just the trouble around here,” she fussed. “Nobody wants to tell me anything.”

“You do deserve to know, I guess,” Peony conceded, albeit reluctantly. “Jamie and I were friends in Australia, before we ran away from the man who had made us his slaves—Increase Pipher.”