Except she didn’t grow out of it, and that wasn’t an end to it. She didn’t get much worse, but she didn’t get better, neither, and now she was puny and thin, looking closer to twelve than sixteen, and there wasn’t much she could do for long without running out of breath, unless it involved sitting. So she could plant and weed but not hoe and water; sew and mend, but not clean or do the laundry. Do things like shucking peas, but not cook, unless it was stirring something while sitting down. All the “easy” chores, things Ma could do in a minute, and even then Anna took so long over them that sometimes Ma chased her off to do something else and finished the job herself.

“ . . . if I’d had my way I’d’ve sent her to Jinny two years ago. That there doctor’s about as much use as a hound-dog that won’t hunt. He kills more people than he saves. A pure waste of two bits.”

Her throat closed up, and her chest got tight, and her cheeks burned with embarrassment. That was her mother, who’d raised her voice just enough that now Anna could hear her clearly. Ma did that, making it sound like something she’d pressed for was somehow someone else’s fault if it didn’t go well. So Pa could take it as he’d been the one to urge the doctor, or even that Anna herself had begged for it, and he’d probably misremember it as the second, and she would be the one that wasted a whole two bits.

And the “her” that was to be sent away, of course, was Anna. The “Jinny” was her aunt Jinny, someone Anna had never seen, but who was nevertheless a constant presence in this household. It was Jinny who sent regular basketfuls of “potions” that Ma sold or traded to folks in Soddy and even Daisy, who mostly couldn’t afford the Company doctor. It was Jinny who sent other potions that Ma gave to Pa and Anna, and something Ma called her “tea” that she didn’t share with anyone, but Anna suspected was a potion too. Jinny lived east, near to Ducktown, all alone, in a cabin that had belonged to her granny. And that was all Anna knew about her. Except that Pa never liked hearing about the woman, though he never complained about the extra pennies the potions brought in.

Pa coughed. She hated that cough. It wasn’t like her cough. It sounded like there was something deeply wrong with him—and she knew he didn’t seem as strong as he’d been only a couple of years ago. But Ma insisted he’d be all right, they just needed to find the right potion from Jinny . . .

But so far no potion he’d been made to drink had done him much good for long. And lots of other coal miners in Soddy got that cough too. And they, too, would get weaker and weaker, and then they wouldn’t be able to work, and then—well, usually as soon as the weather turned, they’d get the Winter Fever and it would carry them off. She was pretty sure Ma knew that too. And from Ma’s tone of voice, Anna reckoned she’d decided she wasn’t going to have two people she had to nursemaid on her hands.