Ada grabbed the older boy by his collar.  He stumbled forward but didn’t seem to mind being roughly handled.  “This one.”

“Does he have a name?  No, wait.  I refuse to ask you.  I’m going to ask him.”

“That’s fine by me.”

Charlotte turned to the boy.  He remained completely calm, unfazed by any of this.  “What’s your name?” Charlotte said and felt that finally she’d found someone she could be gentle with.

“Brewster,” he said.

“And is that really your sister?”  Instead of a wicked mouthy witch impersonating a twelve-year-old.

Brewster nodded.  “Ever since I can remember.”

“What should I do with the bread, Brewster?”

“How we do it in our family with anything good we get is use some, save some, give some away.”

“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said.  “You two can’t possibly be related.”

In the end, she gave Brewster all the bread to do with as he saw fit.

“I told you,” Ada said.

<>

Charlotte put the tin oven away and vowed never to use it again.  In the afternoon, she sat in the shade and read.  She wanted to go into the circle and check on the horses but that meant exposing herself to other people’s eyes.  Restless, she went in search of more firewood, though the brush was thinning out.

As the sun began its descent of the sky, leaving long shadows, Ellis Gray reappeared.  She’d almost stopped thinking about him, stopped thinking about anything at all.

“Molasses bread,” he said and she made a small sound.

“I think it was a mistake,” she said.

“I hear it was a kindness, not a mistake.”

“The child, Ada?  I’m done for.  She’s smart and she’ll be telling what she saw.”

Ellis Gray studied her.  “Ada?  If that’s the wild one with all the hair, I don’t think she talks to anyone at all.  But I came to tell you one of the farmers shot a deer.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?  Fresh meat?”

“It’s a lucky thing.  Mostly, being farmers and shopkeepers and such, they’re more likely to shoot their own foot off.  But with the birthing and the buck, there’ll be a celebration of sorts and that doesn’t normally happen.  It’s the same question again, if you want to be there.”

“I don’t.”

“Just tell me and I won’t ask anymore.  You’ve seen how this works.  It ends up being a community, has to.”

So he was aware.  “I couldn’t take curious questions, let alone angry ones,” she said.  “Thank you but I’m better off staying to myself.”

As the light was beginning to fade, Charlotte watched a shadow figure coming down along the circle of wagons, headed slowly, painfully in her direction.  She stood up, wondering what this was.  Then she was hastening forward, protectively holding out her arms.