And Captan looked at my father and barked again, a ringing bark that echoed as it rang. And turned to my mother and sang to her some more.

And I watched, and I watched, and I watched as my mother began to play. Something I couldn’t name and hadn’t heard in a long, long time. Something sweet, and sad, and wonderful that made Captan croon and tremble. Made us all smile like children, which some of us were. Which all of us were in that moment.

Even my father, who opened his eyes as if it were Christmas morning, he himself the gift.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t say a word. But this time, when he looked at me, he was there. He was right there, in those eyes, looking out at me as he once had.

And I was right there where he could see me.

Chapter Seventy

None of us got another minute of sleep for the rest of that night.

We stayed in the bedroom and watched as my father slowly surfaced, blinking and sighing, all of us caught between hope that he was finally awake for good and fear that he would slip away from us once more.

Captan returned to Cate’s side, quiet again. Samuel lay down at the foot of the bed and made up songs about brindled dogs and black snakes. Esther and my mother paced and murmured. And I checked on Cate’s leg, fed her some tea, and said to my father, again and again, “It’s all right, Daddy. It’s all right now.”

Just before dawn, he finally turned his head toward my mother and said, his voice full of rust, “What happened?”

It took a while for anyone to answer, what with my mother crying and Samuel asking Cate how she had managed to fix him; but after things calmed down, Esther said, as I’d known she would, “You were cutting down a tree and Ellie got in the way and you got hurt saving her.”

“Esther, hush now,” my mother said.

“Oh, I don’t blame her,” Esther said. “She’s just a kid.”

Which was how I felt about Samuel chasing that rabbit.

And Esther was only saying what she thought was true. And what was true. At least true enough.

But a part of me soared and sang when my father looked directly at me and said, “Not Ellie.”

“But I was,” I said, meeting his eyes but completely aware of Samuel, who had laid his little head on my father’s chest and could hear every word we said. “Esther’s right.”

My father frowned. He held my gaze for another long moment, and I thought he might say something more, but then he put his hand on Samuel’s head, and nodded slowly, and gave me the smallest of smiles.

I smiled back at him.