They scattered to gather up logs to make the dam. Rosalie made a try at helping though the plan didn’t inspire her the way it did them. She’d found a log, too heavy to pick up and it still had branches so she couldn’t roll it. She’d managed to raise it just a little bit, which sent a dozen bugs, a hundred legs—centipedes, wood lice, white-as-ghosts spiders—streaming in the direction of her feet.

“Father won’t let us kill fish,” she reminded Henry, lowering the log to the ground again. “We’ll be whupped if he finds out.” Nelson’s role was to be game for anything. Rosalie’s was not. The fish are safe from her.

At Rosalie’s suggestion, they have an egg-fry instead. She fetches three eggs from the henhouse, snatching them warm from their smelly nests, the chickens gabbling about her. By the time she returns, the boys have a fire going. Nelson has collected a pot and filled it with water. They eat the eggs hot from the shells. It’s enough like being kings to satisfy them all.

Another day: Nelson had found a large patch of moss in a forest clearing that he said was soft like a carpet, like the red Turkish rug by the fireplace in the cabin. He’d come looking for someone to show and found only Rosalie and he’d taken her to it, holding on to the branches like a gentleman so they wouldn’t whip back and lash Rosalie in the face.

Better than a carpet, Rosalie agreed. Much better. Henry Byron had arrived then and the two boys built a makeshift lean-to over the moss, a house of sticks, just large enough for the three to sit together inside, arm touching arm touching arm. Rosalie could feel the damp cold beneath her. She could smell the smoky, sweaty odor of the boys on either side.

“We be dry here even when it rains,” Nelson said, as if the sun weren’t filtering right through the roof, dappling Rosalie’s hands and his own face. Under the leaves, they made plans. The boys decided to be Indians. But Rosalie opted for the comforts of the Swiss Family Robinson. While the boys planned hunts and raids, Rosalie imagined bedrooms and ballrooms, water that dripped through hollowed logs so they could wash their hands and their dishes.

Henry Byron and Nelson were always rearranging the world—lugging in stepping-stones to make new paths across the creek to its little island, moving logs and branches to be dams and bridges, forts and teepees. They dreamt of escape, of leaving their chores and lessons, their houses and families, and moving to the woods. For Rosalie, the escape was very real, a temporary respite from Mary Ann and Elizabeth and the tedium of caring for babies. She never knew if it was also real for Nelson.