“And so was Mrs. Stark,” she said, pulling me back. “The grocer’s wife. So kind. Did you know she lost four babies, one right after the other? But she still smiled every time I walked in the door with you children.”

“I remember,” I said slowly. Distracted. “She gave us peppermints.”

“She did. Every time she saw you.” My mother thrust a log into the stove.

She pulled a mug from the cupboard and measured some balsam chips into a scrap of rag. Dropped the pouch into the mug and stood quietly, gathering wool, as the kettle began to tick and rumble.

“Yes, I miss town,” my mother said quietly, after a bit. “But I have people here, too.”

She poured water in the mug, and the steam rose from it like wet, white fire.

I watched her as if she were a bird perched on my finger. “I wish Daddy could have seen you out there.”

My mother looked at me through the steam. “Out where?”

“In the yard. Standing up to Larkin’s mother like that. Talking about Daddy and all he’s done.”

My mother made a face that was part rue, part something else. “If he’d been there to hear all that, I wouldn’t have had to say it in the first place.”

Which was true enough but not the whole story. “You might have added a thing or two about us, still here and all right no matter how long Daddy’s been asleep.” I paused, but she didn’t say anything. “How you yourself have managed.” I swallowed. “And Esther, too.”

And Larkin’s mother, I thought, years beyond when her own husband had gone to his rest.

I wondered if my mother would well up with the same kind of darkness if, years from now, my daddy still hadn’t come back to us or, worse, left us altogether.

As Esther had once said: If was quite a word.

My mother nodded thoughtfully.

I waited for her to say something about how I, too, had managed since my father’s accident.

“We have done our best,” she said. “But I fear that Esther and I are not meant for this kind of life.” She met my eye. “Not like you seem to be.”

Which was both praise and accusation. Not just what she said but how she said it. Enough bitterness to spoil the sweet.

“And that’s it?” I said. “We’re born to one thing and that’s it?” Of all the things she’d ever said to me, this was the most confounding.