“Of a sort,” my mother said with a sigh. “Dried blueberries and apples with walnuts and a little maple syrup. Which is hardly what I’d choose to bake. But bake it I will.”

“For Miss Cate?” I said.

She nodded. “How often do we have a guest in this house?”

I wouldn’t have called Cate a guest, but I was glad that my mother saw her that way.

At the bedroom door, we found both Cate and my father sleeping, though differently. I could see that just by looking at them. Even asleep, Cate looked as if she were . . . aware.

Esther was there, too, sitting alongside the bed in the rocking chair, reading aloud to both of them—and to Captan, too—as they slept. A very good book about a bear named Winnie and a pig named Piglet and a host of others that I had loved and still loved and would always love.

I was jealous at the thought that Cate might be meeting Pooh and Piglet for the very first time—like tasting a first strawberry or hearing a first loon—since the book was only a little older than Samuel and meant for children at a time when her son was already grown. But perhaps she had read it to Larkin when he was little, as my mother had to me.

As Esther had to me, too, I realized, when she had only just learned to read, the story coming out word by word, slowly and carefully, like a cat when a dog’s nearby. But that hadn’t mattered at all.

What I remembered best was lying next to my sister at bedtime, tucked in together, while she read that story to me.

When Esther looked up from the book to find me and Samuel standing in the doorway, watching, she stopped.

I expected annoyance. Impatience. But she simply paused, as if we were a couple of songbirds on the windowsill—not so much a distraction as something worth noticing—and I felt my heart swell, the way a bud will when the days grow warm.

And that’s when Cate said, without opening her eyes, “Why did you stop, girl?” and I heard in her voice that she was in more pain than she should be. More pain than I’d thought.

And I knew it was time for me to do something about that.

“Is the hag going to live here with us now?” Samuel whispered after we’d crept out of the room.

“If now means right now, then yes,” I said. “But beyond that I can’t say.”

Which seemed to satisfy Samuel, a here-and-now sort of boy if ever there was one.

“Can I have some vinegar?” I asked my mother

She looked at me curiously. “For your father this time?” she said as she pulled a jug of vinegar from the cupboard.

“Maybe later. Right now, for Miss Cate.”