That Quiet was mine. And I was his. And there, right there grinding cornmeal, close enough so I could touch her, was the mother I had missed. Who’d been coming back to me, bit by bit, over these past few difficult, wonderful days. And was all that much closer, now, because I’d met her halfway.

—

When we finished with the corn and cleaned up the mess, my mother said, “Cate’s not ready to go home yet, but I think we can move her now.” She gave me an apologetic smile. “To your bed, perhaps?” I’d continued to sleep in the shed with Maisie and the puppies while my mother gave her own place to Cate, and I hadn’t minded one bit. So I nodded, smiling at the thought of Cate and Samuel and Esther all sharing a room, telling stories by lantern light.

It was easy to move Cate from one room to another, carefully, slowly, with Captan dancing alongside and Samuel in the lead, chattering about a dog army in which Captan was a captain and Quiet was a general and Maisie was a lieutenant, until we all told him to hush and get out of the way.

I was the one to go back for Cate’s pillow. So I was alone with my father for the first time since he’d woken up.

“Ellie,” he said, as I turned toward the door with the pillow in my arms.

When I looked back, ready to fetch him something, to give him some water . . . whatever it was he wanted . . . he gave me something that I wanted, instead.

“Ellie,” he said, softly. “I do remember.”

I went to stand close to him. “What do you remember?”

He took my hand. “That day. The day the tree fell.”

At first, I thought he meant that the memory had finally surfaced. And I said so.

“No,” he replied. “I always remembered. As soon as I woke up all the way, I remembered all of it.”

And I remembered how Esther had told him about the accident and how he had looked at me—straight at me—and said, “Not Ellie.” How I had heard, in those two words, everything I needed to hear.

“I wish you could have been with me these past weeks,” I whispered. “To watch what happened.” Though much of it would have been different, had he been well.

My father smiled at me, his eyes full of sun in the shadowy room. “I see it all very clearly,” he said. “I see it in every bit of the girl you’ve become.”

—

Quiet was waiting for me when I went out into the sunshine later that day.

He had managed to find his way into the yard while Maisie was busy with the other pups, their eyes open now, too.

I found him watching an ant make its way up a blade of grass.