I thought about the blessing Larkin had taught me. The one Cate said to him whenever he left her. Saol fada agus breac-shláinte chugat.

“Shame on you,” I said.

But Esther didn’t look ashamed. “And why would her dog come to you? You’ve only known her for a little while. Why wouldn’t he have gone to Larkin?”

I didn’t know the answer to that, but I pictured him there, too. Trying to help her but needing help himself.

I said as much.

“Then I’ll go with you,” my mother said, though she sounded a little uncertain.

“You will?” I turned to stare at her.

She looked like the same mother I’d had that morning, but something was different, and I thought back to what she’d said about emptiness.

Maybe she saw—in the shape of a dog with a doll in his mouth—a chance to do something about that.

“I will,” she said. “If it’s more trouble than the two of them can handle, they’ll need both of us. Esther, you’ll take care of Samuel and your father while we’re gone.” She glanced down at her dress. “But let me do something about this first.”

I didn’t know what she intended, but then she came back wearing a pair of my father’s trousers, cinched with his belt at the waist and rolled into cuffs at the ankle.

“You’ll have to clean off those poultices in a while,” she told Esther, who looked like a child for the first time in years.

“I’ll help you, Esther,” Samuel said. “I’m good with poultices.”

His face reminded me of when he had helped Mr. Peterson with the thorn in Scotch’s hoof.

But Esther just looked hard at me and then my mother and back again before turning away toward my father’s room.

“Now what did I do?” I said softly.

“Nothing,” my mother replied. “I think she’s upset with me this time.”

“For going to Miss Cate’s with me?”

She sighed. “For both those things.”

I had said only one thing, though I now saw it was two.

I pulled on my boots while my mother fetched hers. We buttoned up our jackets, mine still damp but warm from hanging by the stove.

“Should we take something along?” my mother said.

“Me,” Samuel said. “I want to go, too.”

“No, Esther needs you to stay here,” my mother said. “To help with your father.”

“We should take some jerky,” I replied. “And a lantern.” We would need light on the trail, and quick fire when we got there.

“And bread.” She put the food in a sack while I fetched a lantern and lit it at the stove.

I felt in my pockets for my knife. My flint.

“You should wear a cap,” I told her. “So the branches on the path don’t get caught in your hair.”