Slowly, bit by bit, I spooned the glue in a ring around Cate’s wound, then stirred what was in the pot while I waited for the stuff on her leg to firm up a bit.

In the lull, I wondered where Larkin was and hoped he would come back soon . . . and with no rancor.

It was more important that Cate got well than who got her there.

Captan, who had stayed as close to Cate as he could, climbed to his feet and stretched his front legs out before him, his tail in the air, threw his head back, and yawned a mighty yawn. Then he shook himself all over and looked at me expectantly.

“Do you need to go out, boy?”

“He’ll go to the door if he does,” Cate muttered without opening her eyes. “And he’ll ask for some supper after you’ve had yours.”

I spooned another ring of glue above the first, using the smooth side of the stick to nudge it back to neat, though I can’t say it was a pretty business.

“None of this should feel good,” Cate said. “But it does.”

I smiled. “When I’m sick, I love how my mother takes care of me. The sound of her moving around my bed while I lie with my eyes closed. How it feels when she lays a cloth on my forehead.” I began another ring of glue atop the last. “Almost worth being sick.”

Cate sighed. “I’d like to think I made someone feel that way when I was a nurse.”

Which astonished me. “Ask Esther,” I said.

She smiled. “I can smell the hot vinegar.”

I could smell it, too, sharp as broken glass.

She opened her eyes. “Won’t it melt the glue away?”

“It might, a bit. But maybe not too much. And if it does, it does.”

I didn’t care what kind of mess it made.

Cate lifted her head up again to watch me working.

For a time we were silent while I added more glue, blowing on it until it had a skin, soft but firm.

My mother, at the door, said, “I’ve brought you some more tea.”

The smell of balsam twined with the smell of the vinegar, and I felt as if I were in a fresh winter garden, though the stink of the glue failed to give much ground.

She brought two mugs of tea into the room and set them on the windowsill. She made sure not to look at what I was doing to Cate’s leg. “Is everything all right?”

“It is,” I said. “Will you bring that vinegar now?”

She waited for a long moment.

Then she went to do as I’d asked.

After a moment, she came back into the room, carrying the pot of steaming vinegar. “I don’t know what you—”