And it worked to make her unhappiness go away, because just as she was imagining herself biting into a peach so sweet it made her tongue curl up with delight, she fell asleep.

She woke with Ma shaking her shoulder. It was just come sun-up. Thin light came in through the tiny window over Ma and Pa’s bed. She could tell by the silence in the house that Pa was already gone to the mine. And that hurt, hurt more than she expected, that he didn’t even wake her to say goodbye. Her chest went tight again.

“Jeb’ll be here in a right minute,” Ma was saying. “I got yore things all bundled up in my old shawl. Get dressed and get some breakfast into yore belly or it’ll be a long pull till lunch.”

She scrambled out of bed into morning air so cold and damp it made her shake, made a quick wash at the basin full of even colder water, and pulled on her dress and apron as Ma stood there impatiently tapping her foot. Ma didn’t even let her do her own hair; as soon as she took it out of its braids, Ma snatched the brush out of her hand and brushed it so roughly it brought tears to her eyes, then braided it in the two braids she hated, because it made her look like a child. As soon as she was decent, Ma all but shoved her into the kitchen, and plunked her down at the table, where there was a bowl of grits and a hunk of cornbread waiting for her, with some potlikker from the greens on the back of the stove to sop up with the cornbread. Ma didn’t even go back to the bedroom to pour out the wash-water or to make up the trundle; she just stood there, as if to make sure Anna ate quickly. It was much more than she usually ate, but with Ma staring daggers at her, she obediently took up her spoon and did her best. The grits had some bacon fat in them from cooking Pa’s lunch, which was a surprise. Usually all she ever got in her grits was salt. Maybe Ma was feeling a mite sorry for sending her off like this.

Or maybe not, given how Ma was staring at her.

When she’d gotten down as much as she could, Ma snatched the uneaten cornbread from the table, put it in a square of clean rag with another couple of pieces of cornbread, and tied it all up. And just at that moment, out there on the quiet street, she heard hoofbeats and the creak of a wooden wagon.

“There, that’ll be Jeb Sawyer,” Ma said. “Come on! No keepin’ him waitin’!” She picked up a bundle from the floor and shoved it into Anna’s right hand, and stuck the packet of cornbread into her left, and chivvied her out the door.

There was just a sliver of sun above the horizon, the damp air made her shiver, and in someone’s backyard a rooster crowed. There was a buckboard wagon with a black mule in the traces right outside the front door, with a weather-beaten man just getting down off the seat, a man with grizzled hair under a battered straw hat, wearing red longjohns with the sleeves rolled up, under a pair of faded jeans overalls. The man looked surprised to see that she was ready to go, but didn’t say anything other than “Mornin’, Missus Jones.”