Cate wiped the tears off her face. “Ever,” she said. “Such a word.”

But I didn’t want to think about what she was saying. That ever, for her, might not be a long time, even if she got well.

Thinking about that would do me no good.

Do her no good.

Wouldn’t help my father at all.

“Not your leg,” I said. “I mean you.”

She sighed. “I know what you mean.”

“I’m sorry,” my mother said, opening the door. “But he wouldn’t go with Larkin, and—”

“Oh, there he is,” Cate said as Captan barged into the room and went immediately to lay his head in her lap. “There’s my good boy.”

She sounded like I did. “Can Quiet come in, too?” I asked my mother.

“Well, I don’t know if—”

“Captan won’t hurt him,” Cate said. “I can promise you that.”

So my mother sent Samuel, who handed Quiet to me and then went out with her again, protesting loudly.

Through the door, I could hear him asking, “How is the hag going to use two dogs to make Daddy well?”

Cate smiled a real smile. “That’s some boy you have there.”

“Samuel?” I said. “Or Quiet?”

“Both. But especially Samuel.” She looked at me gently. “Yes, of course you were in the way, too, Ellie. You did what you were supposed to do. Trying to save your little brother. And your father did what he was supposed to do. Trying to save you both.”

I cleared my throat, which was still too tight. “Not just trying.”

I held Quiet out so he could look his father in the eye. “This is Captan,” I said into his little ear. “This is maybe your daddy.”

“Oh, I’m not fond of maybes,” Cate said. She watched Captan sniff Quiet’s little head. “What is, is.”

“Whether it’s true or not?”

Cate huffed. “Tell me what true is.”

I thought about that. “I know a million true things.”

“As do I. And a million I can’t explain, though they’re real. And quite a few I can’t believe, though they happened. Whether they should have or not.”

She looked at my father in the bed next to where she sat. “Here’s a true thing, and a good one.”

I was surprised by that. “Good?”

She gave me a long look. “He might have died.”

Which was also true.

I considered his face. How deeply he slept. “How will we wake him? I thought maybe we could try skunk stink or—”

“Skunk stink?” She looked amazed.

“The doctor who was here tried smelling salts, but they didn’t do any good. I thought maybe skunk, though, would make him curious enough to wake up.” I looked at my father’s slack face. “And horseradish might do some good, too. I don’t know anybody who could sleep through a dose of horseradish.”