“A witch,” Esther said, her nightgown clean, her hair combed, her hands shiny with the tallow she rubbed on them before bed each night.

“She’s not a witch,” I said. “And she knows a lot of things about making people well. She has medicine she’s made from the woods, and medicine she’s learned from books, and ways to heal people from both” (though I said nothing about the maggots).

“And how is it that you know so much about this woman?” my mother said. She put Samuel’s breakfast on the table.

“I saw that dog again and followed him up the mountain,” I said. “She has a little cabin up there.”

“That dog we saw?” Samuel said. “With the dead rabbit?”

“That’s where you disappeared to yesterday? When you should have been doing your chores?” My mother shook her head. “You will not go near that woman again, do you hear me? Or that dog. Or up-mountain any farther than the turn to the Andersons’. Or I will lock you in the woodshed until you’ve found your wits.”

Esther and Samuel had stopped eating. They stared at my mother. At me.

I got up from the table and took off my jacket. “I used my shirtsleeves to tie up a wound on her leg,” I said, my voice shaking a little. “A fisher cat bit her. And the bite festered. And she’s sick with fever. And a boy from the other side of the mountain helped me clean the wound and pour honey in it and make willow bark tea for her fever. And his mother came and was angry with him for being there, just like you’re angry with me now, though I don’t know why, because Miss Cate isn’t a bad person at all and she taught Larkin how to read, which is something you would have done, too, Mother. Or you, Esther.” I turned to her. “And I will go back up there to help her again. And I will bring her back down here when she’s well enough. And I will keep trying to wake Daddy up, because he has to get well. He has to,” I said to my mother, to Esther. “Or you won’t either.”

I did not say, And neither will I. But I thought it. For the first time, I thought it.

No one said anything for a long moment.

“Who’s Larkin?” Samuel said.

And just like that I could breathe again.

Just like that, the tears that had been ready to fall decided to wait.

I turned to him. “The boy who helped me help Miss Cate.”

My mother ran her hands over her face.