While my mother fed him in hummingbird sips, I fed Cate likewise, though she managed the pie in bites.

“At my age, making friends with a new kind of pie is an unexpected blessing,” she said. “I would never have thought of putting those things together, though they make for a fine family. And such a buttery crust.”

My mother smiled. “You’re a terrible liar, but thank you.” She collected the empty mugs, the plate, the vinegar pot. “Shall I heat this up again?”

“Just one more go of it, please,” I said. “And then we wait for the morning.”

She must have seen the question on my face—And, in the morning, will you still send for the doctor?—because she said, “That’s fine, then, Ellie. We’ll see how everything goes.”

When she had gone, Cate said, “You’re exactly like her and entirely different, aren’t you.” Another question that wasn’t a question.

But since she’d asked, I gave her an answer. “Entirely different, yes, though I don’t know what she was like when she was a girl, and I don’t know what I’ll be like when I’m grown up. So I don’t really know much of anything.”

Cate gazed at me sleepily for a long moment. “You know a fair bit, Ellie.”

“I wish I’d known her before she had Esther. And me. And Samuel. I wonder what she was like back then.”

“Well, different, of course. And different, still, before she married your father. And different, again, before she picked up that mandolin over there for the first time. And, again, after she laid it down.” She closed her eyes. “The sun never rises the way it did the day before. Not exactly. And it won’t rise the same way tomorrow. But it’s still the sun,” she said. “And we’d all be just as cold without it.”

—

When my mother came back with the vinegar, she said good night to all four of us.

“You can have my bed,” I told her. “I’m happy to sleep with the dogs.”

She looked a little sad at that, until I said, “It’s a lovely thing, to sleep with puppies.”

So we decided on that and she went off to bed, leaving us in a pool of lantern light beyond which the entire world disappeared again.

I let the vinegar cool a little and then slowly ladled in another small dose.

We waited quietly while it seeped into the wound, a puddle of it remaining on Cate’s skin. “I think that will do for now,” I said.

Cate was tired out but no worse than before. Perhaps a bit better.

I left the gash open and laid a fresh cloth across her leg before pulling the blanket over her.

Then I went around the bed to my father.

“I wish I could do something for you, too,” I whispered.