I thought about how it had felt to find them, one by one, and to think that they were meant for me. To think that someone understood what they would mean to me. To think that someone understood me.

“Finding those carvings, keeping them to myself, how mysterious it all was . . . made me . . . happy,” I said, looking away.

I waited.

“So is it all right?” he said. “Or is it ruined now? Knowing me without the trees in between.”

I smiled at him. “It’s not ruined,” I said. “Let’s go see my father.”

Chapter Fifty-Eight

“Where are you going?” my mother said as I led Larkin past the kitchen table where she’d laid out two buns stuffed with jerky and dried apples.

“Just for a minute, to see Daddy,” I said, the bees buzzing in my pack, Quiet nesting in my arms.

Larkin gave her an apologetic look. “If that’s all right with you, ma’am.”

“I, well . . . it’s just . . .” She gave me a stern look. “I thought you were in a hurry, Ellie?”

“We are, but this won’t take more than a minute. I want to introduce them, is all.”

To which she said nothing. But she went along with us as we headed toward the bedroom.

I led Larkin through the door.

When he followed me in, he went not to the bed but, after a moment, straight to the corner of the room where he picked up my mother’s mandolin as if it were made of glass.

He carried it to the window. Tipped it in the light and looked inside for the maker’s mark.

When he turned to my mother, I had a hard time deciding which of their faces was the more stricken.

“If you don’t want this anymore, I’ll trade you anything for it.” He sounded as if he had something stuck in his throat.

My mother went to him. Took the mandolin in her arms and held it against her chest.

“What in the world makes you think I don’t want it anymore?”

“You don’t play it.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want it.”

She put the mandolin back in the corner.

And then she left without another word.

Larkin watched her go. Then he turned to my father.

Since the doctor had come months earlier, no one else outside my family had been allowed to see my father, and it was odd to watch Larkin as he went curiously toward the bed.

“Daddy, this is Larkin, who lives on the mountain. On the other side. He’s helping me help that woman who told you to put a leech on your ear.”

I didn’t expect an answer, and I didn’t get one. His face was as pale as a candle, his skin just as waxy, and he was more still than a stump.