“Of course not, Ellie. I hope we all have at least a little chameleon in us. But chameleons change to suit what’s around them, and it was the other way around in town.” She looked at her ruined hands. “I feel like a stranger in this new skin. I left behind too much of who I’ve always been, with not enough new to fill up what’s empty now. Not enough new that suits me.”

I thought about that.

“So it’s not just Daddy being asleep that makes you feel that way?”

She shook her head. “I’m stronger now because I have to be, and I suppose I should find some satisfaction in that.” She picked up her mug with both hands. “And I do, Ellie. But satisfaction doesn’t hold a candle to what I had before.”

I watched her drink her tea, her eyes closed.

“What would you call that?” I said.

“What I had before?”

I nodded.

“I don’t think there’s a word for it.” She paused. “I was who I was, without thinking too much about it.”

And I realized that she must have forgotten how it felt to be a girl untying a new ribbon, opening a new box every day, and finding, again and again, what it meant to change, to grow, all of it troubling and exciting and true.

Surely Esther knew how that felt.

As if she’d heard my thoughts, my mother said, “Esther is like me. Holding fast to who she’s always been. And what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Except . . . what about the other things she might become?”

“That’s Esther’s business.” My mother rose to her feet. “Not mine. Not yours.”

And I had no argument with that. Not if it was really true.

“Now go find out what’s taking your brother so long,” she said, turning away. “He could have grown those potatoes by now.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

I sat on the cabin step, lost in thought until Samuel came up from the root cellar, a basket of potatoes over his arm and a grin on his face.

“I saw a white spider as big as my hand. It was disgusting. Kinda squishy.”

“You didn’t kill it, did you?” I pictured the spider smashed into the root cellar floor like a spent star, dingy and dark.

“Don’t be foolish. Of course I didn’t kill it. I just touched it to see how it felt. It was disgusting.” He grinned some more. “I might want one for a pet.”

“Hmm. I bet Mother and Esther would love that.”

“No, they wouldn’t, Ellie,” he said, shaking his little head. “Mother’s right. You have lost your wits.”

“Do you want me to teach you how to make a potato poultice?” I said. “To make Daddy’s sores better?”

Samuel made a face. “A what?”

“Come inside. I’ll show you.”