And then watched as he turned to find Cate lying in the bed next to him.

His eyes grew wide, and he leaned away from her and whispered, “You’re—”

“Cathrine Cleary. I was a nurse in Bethel.” She nodded at my sister. “Esther, there, used to come to us with earaches.”

“But you’re—”

“The hag. Yes, I know.” She nodded at me this time. “Your daughter Ellie found me sick in my cabin. She’s been taking care of me.”

My mother stroked my father’s hand. “And she’s been taking care of you, as well.”

—

In the days that followed, we all helped my father and Cate mend, and ourselves along with them.

On the morning after he woke up, my mother sat by my father, who was now propped up in bed, and fed him a little porridge with maple syrup on it.

“If I’d known we had maple syrup, I’d have woken up sooner,” he said, his voice still raspy from disuse, his head bowed a bit with the hard work of waking.

Cate liked that. “You remind me of my son.” She stroked Captan’s ears. “He made me laugh.”

I’d spent more time on her leg, scraping away the hide glue and pulling open the wound to wipe the honey out, pouring vinegar into the breach and letting it scour her clean.

She had moaned with the pain of the acid on her raw flesh, Captan joining in, and Samuel had stood outside the room and said, “Will you stop hurting the hag please, Ellie?” until she called out to him, “It’s all right, boy. She’s fixing me up good as new.”

But it wasn’t easy for either of us. Or Captan, who had found his voice again in a big way and would bark and mutter if she cried out.

Bit by bit, her wound began to improve. Her fever to abate. And before long I was able to leave her leg alone, with nothing but a single ribbon of cloth to cinch it closed.

Still, I checked it again and again for any sign of trouble.

And every time I did, I found my father’s eyes on me.

“Where did you learn to do that?” he finally asked me.

“Do what?”

“Heal.”

Which I liked. “The things we need to learn to do, we learn to do by doing.”

He looked at me thoughtfully. “Who said that?”

At which I smiled and said, “You did.”

I turned to Cate. “And so did you.”

—

Esther made herself useful and with good grace, helping both my father and Cate as they made their way slowly back toward well.

But it was Larkin who surprised us, on the morning of the third day after Cate had come to stay.

We had wondered at his absence. Cate, especially, had watched for him, sighing and fretting when he didn’t come to see how she was doing.