She’s almost certain now that she’s being watched. The very fact that she’s running confirms it. She hears footsteps behind her, each one timed exactly to match her own, and if no one is there when she looks back that just suggests a preternatural cunning.

She reaches the gate, breathless and with her hair coming out of her braids and into her face. She’s teary and phlegmy, because she still has to return and it seems unfair. Having made it here really should have been enough for Mother. She sits down on the walk beside the bag of mail, her back against the gate, the dogs crowding in close, flanking her protectively. The damp of the ground seeps through her skirt and two petticoats. She wipes her face with a petticoat hem.

All three of them are panting. Rosalie takes hold of Veto’s ruff, pulls him in, his black fur and wet breath hot in her face. She puts her head on the hard ridge of his head. He holds very still until she’s breathing more steadily and can let him go.

To delay her return, she makes a fan of the mail in her lap. Five letters for her father, two of them from England in the same female hand. A magazine with articles about farming. Two playbills for shows in Philadelphia and Boston. Three newspapers. Two letters for her mother, both from Charleston, but only one of them from Father. The packet is too thin to contain money. Mother will be sorry about that; there are always bills to pay. Rosalie holds the letter to her forehead to see if she can tell by touch alone what it might do to Mother. She cannot.

She’s become so attuned to her mother’s moods that there are times when Rosalie can’t be sure what she’s feeling belongs to her. Her mother complains that her back hurts, and Rosalie begins to feel an ache just below her neck, a cramping in her shoulders, a twisting of her spine. Is she really worried about Father’s letter or is her mother worrying through her? Is she really the one too frightened to leave the house, or is that Mother who, for all her indignation over Rosalie’s timidity, can’t let a child out of her sight?

She decides that she’ll look for bluebirds on the way back. If she sees one before she gets to the cabin, Father’s letter will make her mother happy and if she doesn’t, it won’t.

To the delight of the dogs and her own relief, June joins her on the path beside the graveyard. He hands her a stalk of cane sorghum and she puts it in her mouth, tastes the sweetness of its syrup on her tongue. In his company, the dead children are silent. Even the sky brightens and quiets.

“I hate farming,” June tells her. His face is red from the morning’s work. “I won’t be a farmer.” Rosalie is the only one he can say this to. Running the farm is Father’s plan for June since he shows no particular brilliance for anything.