She said her prayers, especially for Pa, and was sure she never would get to sleep. But she was wrong. After all that work, she fell asleep almost immediately, scarcely noticing the tiny glowing eyes lined up along the rafters, shining in the darkness after Jinny put the candles out. And somehow, her rest was troubled not at all by the revelations of the evening.

I should be feelin’ bad, she thought, as she donned her clothing for the day. But . . . she wasn’t. It was more like she had always known these things about her Ma and Pa, but just hadn’t wanted to think about them. And now that her nose had been shoved into the truth—what she felt was more a hollow feeling of loneliness and emptiness than anything else. Sad, but not ready to burst into tears. At least, not yet.

Turning the chickens loose and feeding them helped. They were so sweet with their happy little clucks, and the rooster was so funny, strutting around like he was the owner of all he could see. Aunt Jinny told her to sweep the cabin rather than muck out the pigs. “Not sure y’all’s fit to muck out the sty, not till y’all is stronger. I’ll muck, y’all build th’ compost, an’ we’ll do’t arter breakfus’,” was what she said as Anna went out the door. So she came back to the cabin after setting the chickens loose and swept with a will until her aunt called her to eat.

Breakfast helped some more, with bounty she was rapidly becoming accustomed to. This morning there was fried mush, eggs, and sausage, and something brown and clear that Aunt Jinny poured generously over the mush. She noticed Anna was staring at the stuff askance. “’Tis maple syrup, chile,” her aunt told her. “I makes it m’self in spring. Try it. Figgered today y’all should hev some sweet t’ meller out the bitter words y’all got last night.”

One taste, and Anna was in heaven. It wasn’t like honey; it wasn’t like molasses. It was something all to itself and she couldn’t get enough of it. Aunt Jinny watched her eat with amusement.

Did Aunt Jinny even understand remotely how much food had come to mean for Anna? The lack of it was literally sickness and pain, and abundance like this felt like coming home to Heaven.

“If I’da knowed how bad thangs were for y’all,” Jinny said, in soft tones she had never heard out of her aunt before this, “I’da niver left y’all there thet long. I swear. An’ iffen I still couldn’ta got y’all away from that Lew Jones, I’da done more. Sent Maybelle parcels. Food, more thangs she coulda sold. Lookit this!” She waved her hand at the ceiling, and its festoons of smoked meats and fish. “Th’ Holcrofts ’n me already put up parcels fer poor widders in Ducktown. Some o’ thet could go t’ yore Ma. Weren’t hardly no more work t’raise one more pig a year and smoke it up. I’da done it. I would. It hurts m’cold old heart t’think how starved y’all was.”