“I’ve made myself a cup of tea. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. You’re welcome. You’re very welcome. Where are the children?”

“I left them in town. Another woman at the boardinghouse said she’d watch them for me if I did her washing for her when I came back. It looks as if you’ve done well for yourself, Nevare.”

“Yes. That is…yes. I was able to enlist, and the colonel gave me this post. I guard the cemetery. Dig the graves and whatnot. But what brings you to Gettys?” She set the shirt she had finished mending on the table, and tucked the needle neatly into the thread on the spool. “Well. I had to leave my old house. Things got very ugly there this winter. I know you meant well when you left us plenty of meat. And I don’t know how you weeded the vegetable patch like that; I had no idea there were that many plants there.

But the problem was what it always is. The more you have, the more ruthless people will be in trying to take it from you. At first my neighbors come to my door begging. And I said no. Not to be cruel, but because I knew that what you left, while it seemed a lot at the time, was probably just enough to keep us all fed through the winter.” She picked up the shirt she had mended, turned it over in her hands several times, and set it down again. She shook her head to herself, and the sunlight from the window moved on her dark hair, making it gleam. She tried to smile, but it came out more as a grimace.

“Then they came trying to trade, but I said no again, for the same reason.

How could they blame me? I have the three little ones; my first duty is to keep them alive. And my old neighbors would have said the same to me had the shoe been on the other foot! Well, after that, they started stealing from me. I tried to defend what I had, but there was only one of me. They were getting to my snares before I ever did; resetting them was a waste of time, because I was just doing that work for them. But I thought, well, I’ve got the deer meat, and I’d brought in all the garden vegetables to the shed.

“I put as much as I could inside the cabin with us, but then I scarcely dared leave the place, for fear they’d come in and take it while I was gone.

They stole every bit of the meat that I had to leave hanging in the shed, and dug all through the vegetable patch, looking for any small potatoes I’d missed, for anything at all. I scarcely dared go to sleep at night. It was like living in the middle of a pack of wolves.”

Her voice had dropped down to a murmur. She fell silent, staring at the worn cuff of my shirt. When the silence stretched, I got up and put the kettle back on the fire. “Hitch said you wouldn’t even let him inside the door. Did you get the things I sent in the carry sack?”