“I don’t want to do my lessons,” Samuel said. “And I made the potato thing, so I should get to help, too.”

“Esther needs someone to read to while we take care of your father,” my mother told him. “Let that be you.”

He wasn’t entirely convinced, but my mother’s face gave him no choice in the matter, so he went with us toward my father’s room to fetch Esther.

When she heard what we meant to do, she stood up so quickly that her book fell to the floor.

“Come on,” Samuel said, picking it up. “You can read to me now.”

For a long moment she stayed where she was, looking at me and the bowl of potato in my hand, looking at my mother, a fair amount of regret plain on her face. But she didn’t say a thing.

It was clear that she wanted no part of what we were doing, though I would have thought some messes worth making, even for Esther.

Maybe if I could help my father all the way to well again, she would come back to me, too, as she had for a little while, not so long before. But that would be up to her.

—

When Esther and Samuel had left, my mother turned my father over and used clean rags to cover him everywhere except the sores themselves so I was looking at a landscape of white cloth and red flesh.

All the while, he lay still and showed no signs of waking.

Nonetheless, I talked to him as I had for months now, hoping he could hear me.

“I’m sorry if this hurts,” I said as I spooned the potato mixture onto the wounds and laid more rags over the poultices.

My mother stood out of the way while I worked, holding her own hands, but as soon as I was through, she covered my father with a blanket and pulled the rocking chair up close beside him.

“I’ll stay with him,” she said. “You go and finish getting supper ready.” She stroked his hair.

At the door, I turned back to see her lay her head next to his, her whole body shaking.

But then Samuel came running, shouting. “Come see! That big dog is at the door, Ellie. And he has a doll in his mouth.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

My mother wanted me to wait until morning to go see if Cate was all right.

“But that’s her doll,” I said at the cabin door, Esther and my mother on either side of me. “Captan wouldn’t have left her alone at night, and he wouldn’t have taken her doll unless something was wrong.”

“What’s an old hag doing with a doll?” Esther said. “I’ll bet it’s a poppet. For making spells. Or cursing someone.”