I imagined her hungry, thirsty, wondering what might come through her door next. Wondering if she would ever go out that door again.

But she had to know that Larkin would be back soon, no matter what his mother said, and that her wound would heal, now that we’d tended to it. Surely she’d get better now that we’d done that.

I thought of my father. What my mother had said to me.

Surely I hadn’t made things worse by trying to make them better.

—

“What have you done with your jacket?” my mother said when I came through the door and spent a moment taking off my boots.

“Quiet peed on it,” I said, washing up at the kitchen pump. “I left it in the woodshed.”

“Where it will not clean itself. See that you wash it when you do the rest of the laundry.” She turned back to her work.

Another chore, then. One that Esther usually did. But I did not dare say so.

“I will,” I said. “I came in to visit Daddy. But I’ll do the wash straight after that.”

She pulled a tray of venison jerky from the oven and slid in a fresh one. The venison had shrunk and blackened in the heat, but it would last long that way. Tough. Dry. Not given to rot.

I thought about Cate’s leg again.

“Esther’s in there with him now,” my mother said. “And she’ll be in there for as long as you are.”

Even the heat from the oven did not warm me as I stood there, chilled by what she’d said.

“Is Esther standing guard?” My voice had too much mouse in it. “Because I fed him?”

“And threw cold water on him. And put a snake in there with him.” She scraped the hot jerky onto a rack to cool. “And who knows what else.”

What else.

Nothing yet, but I thought back to the other elses I’d considered. Horseradish, which had blown open every head cold I’d ever had. Skunk stink, which would surely tell him that something was amiss. The willow bark tea that was still waiting in my pack.

But Esther would never allow any of those elses to happen.

“Nothing else,” I said. And now there was no mouse in my voice. No cat. Not much of anything. Not even me.

My mother must have heard that emptiness. That defeat. Because she suddenly turned and pulled me into her arms, her chin resting on the top of my head, and sobbed just once. And I could feel a softness I hadn’t felt for a long time. “He’ll come back to us. Or he won’t,” she whispered. “And what we’ll do is wait for him.”

I nodded against her shoulder. She stepped back. “Go see him, then.” She used her clean forearm to push strands of hair off her sweaty forehead.