She threw a log in the stove and latched the door. “What about her?”

“She’s Keavy,” I said.

“Which is just a name, Ellie. She’s not actually a mandolin.” She began to pump water into the kettle. “I’ve never seen a person with less music in her.”

Which I understood. Which was true. For now, that was true. But I thought my mother was being hard-hearted.

Especially when, just the night before, she had seemed newly soft.

“Since Daddy got hurt, you haven’t played once or sung really at all,” I said carefully.

My mother put the kettle on the stove, too hard, and stood with her back to me for a long moment.

Then she said the same thing Samuel had said not so many days before. “You’re twelve, Ellie. What do you know about it?”

I spent some time thinking about what she meant by it while she stood warming her hands over the kettle.

Then I said, “I know what it’s like to try to change something sad and awful.”

She turned from the stove and looked at me.

“I suppose you do,” she said, too much weariness in her voice. “But I won’t leave your father to go up that mountain with you.”

Which was all right, really. Going back to Cate’s alone was something I could do, so I would do it. But I would miss the chance to unspool the thread that kept my mother bound to where she was.

And then she said the thing that made me sorry for pushing so hard: “I already have enough sad and awful as it is.”

“I’ll go with you, Ellie,” Samuel said from the doorway.

And I loved him even more.

“You’ll do no such thing,” my mother said. “You, at least, will do your lessons and your chores today. That’s what you’ll do. You”—she looked back at me—“you do whatever you want. But send your sister down here again. Miss Cate isn’t the only one who needs some help.”

“I’ll feed Maisie,” Samuel said, still watching us. “And I’ll look after the puppies.”

I handed him the skillet. “She’ll be glad to see you. And tell Quiet I’ll be back soon.”

Before I left, I went to see my father.

My mother had turned him onto his side and propped him there to take the weight off his back for a while.

I knelt next to the bed and looked straight into his slack face.

The pillow by his mouth was wet with his drool.

“You woke up once,” I said. “You need to wake up again.” I kissed his forehead. It should have been warmer. “When I come back, we’re going to start all over again. Not just me. You, too.”

But if he heard me, he showed no sign of it.

Chapter Fifty-Three