She knew with a shudder how close the family had come to being on the mercy of the town that winter her mother had fled with the babies. Was it to save them from the poor farm that she had gone? Lyddie had not thought of it that way before. Her mother might have realized that she and Charlie on their own were stout enough to manage, but with the extra burden of their mother and the babies … Had their mother really thought the bear was the devil on earth? Had she really thought the end was near? Lyddie wondered if she’d ever know the truth of that, anymore than she would ever know what had become of their father.

A letter came to Number Five in her mother’s handwriting. Lyddie felt a pang as she ran to fetch the coins to reimburse Mrs. Bedlow for the postage. She hadn’t yet sent any money to her mother. She’d been meaning to. She even had a few dollars set aside for the purpose, but her head had been tied up in other things—her work, the boardinghouse, the dream world of a book—and she had neglected the poor who were her own flesh.

She wanted not to have to open the letter. She wanted the letter never to have arrived, but there it was, and it had to be faced.

Dear Datter,

I was exceding surpriz to get your letter consern yr mov to Lowell. I do not no to say. if you can send muny it will be help to Judah and Clarissa. They fel a grate burdun. Babby Agnes is gone to God. Rachel is porely. Miny hav died, but Gods will be dun.

Yr. loving mother,

Mattie M. Worthen

She tried to remember Agnes’s little face. She strained, squenching her eyes tight to get a picture of her sister, now gone forever. She was a baby. She couldn’t have been more than four the winter of the bear, but that was now nearly two years past. She would have changed. Maybe she didn’t even remember me, Lyddie thought. Could she have forgotten me and Charlie? Me, Lyddie, who washed and fed her and dear Charlie who made her laugh? She wanted to cry but no tears came, only a hard, dry knot in the place where her heart should have been.

She must work harder. She must earn all the money to pay what they owed, so she could gather her family together back on the farm while she still had family left to gather. The idea of living alone and orphaned and without brother or sister—a life barren of land and family like Diana’s …