And of course, there was another factor in her wanting to send Anna to that particular place. Other folks don’t have Aunt Jinny. She knew that was what Ma was thinking. That Jinny would have a better chance at making Anna better if the old lady got her hands directly on Anna. And even if Jinny couldn’t make her well, at least Anna would be out of the way and Ma could concentrate on saving Pa from the Miner’s Cough. And she knew Ma would fight anything, be it beast, man, or sickness, that got between her and her Lew.

“Girl belongs with her kin,” Pa said, after he finished coughing. “Not gallivantin’ around the hollers with a wild woman. She kin stay right here.”

“You allus say that,” Ma said crossly. “I dunno why you allus say that. There ain’t no good reason to keep her here. It ain’t as if you give the girl two hoots and a holler.”

Tears stung Anna’s eyes at that awful truth. Because it was true. Pa didn’t give a pin about her, because she weren’t the son he wanted. Maybe if she’d been strong, tall, and beautiful, like Sally Macray, with boys after her and willin’ to do just about any favor to her Pa if he’d give ’em leave to court her, he’d have given her some heed—but small, weak, and plain meant she was barely earning her keep in the household, she had no prospects of getting married and being off Pa’s hands, and she knew it. And so did Ma.

“Girl belongs with her kin, givin’ her ma help, like God intended,” Lew repeated, once the coughing fit had subsided. “And not with the likes of Jinny. Not with some crowin’ hen what lives all by her lonesome with no man jack to see she cleaves to Godly ways.”

Ma snorted in that way that meant yore a fine one to talk, Llewellyn Jones, with yore whisky and yore chaw, and the way y’all used ter stay up nights with yore friends, a-drinkin’ and a-yarnin’ afore y’all took sick. Thet’s prolly why, even with me a-prayin’ on my knees every Sunday, Jesus don’t heal y’all. But she didn’t say nothin’; that wasn’t her way. She’d just wait for you to get all uncomfortable and change the subject back to what she wanted to talk about.

But then Pa went too far. “And who knows what she’s up to with them potions. She’s probably a witch!”

“Wall, yore quick enough to drink them potions, an’ even quicker to take the money what comes from ’em!” Ma retorted. “An’ I know what I know, and I know thet Anna ain’t never gonna come ’round right here, but Jinny can make her right once she gets the gal under her roof. And Jinny herself invited her!” she added in triumph, and there was a crackle of paper—presumably Ma flourishing Aunt Jinny’s latest letter, which had come with the last batch of potions. Ma wrote to Jinny every time she returned the basket with orders for more potions, and Aunt Jinny allus wrote back when she sent the potions. They used soot-ink and brown paper the fatback came wrapped in, one writing on one side, the other returning on the blank side, grease-stains and all. “It’s right here! She says she wants Anna to come now, right now, while it’s summer and easy travel! And she got it all arranged in advance. It ain’t gonna cost us nothin’—Jinny’s a-takin’ care of all of that. So Anna’s goin’ to her, and there’s an end to it! And one less mouth to feed won’t come amiss, neither.”