“Hurry fast, please,” Abigail said.

Evangeline, already in the process of unlatching the door, went back to her daughter, bent down, and kissed her on the forehead. “I will,” she promised. “What a big girl you are, Abigail. I’m so very proud of you.”

Five minutes later, she was in the barn, hastily milking the cow. The horses seemed nervous, probably because they could smell Scully’s blood, which was everywhere. Evangeline tried not to think beyond doing the most necessary chores, getting back to the house, washing Scully down and then herself.

Between the barn and the cabin, bucket in hand, she made out a dark shape on the ground, like something huddled, and froze in fear, only to realize that it was the carcass of the turkey Scully had shot. The last thing on her mind was food, but after the price he’d paid for that fowl, she couldn’t just leave it lying there for the wild animals to eat.

She set it and the milk aside, upon entering the warmth and light of the house, and immediately latched the door. Then, moving methodically from one task to the next—she’d learned during the war that that was the secret of getting through a crisis without turning into a lunatic—she set Abigail to working on her ciphering at the table, emptied and refilled the basin, fetched soap and a bit of cloth, and carefully washed Scully from his head to his feet. The sheets were probably ruined; she would move the cot in from the lean-to, after her bath, and somehow get him from one place to the other.

In the meantime, there was all that blood to wash away. She marveled that anyone could lose so much, and still live. In Pennsylvania, she’d seen a lot of death, and she knew when it was near.

Scully was wondrously made, and she couldn’t help noticing, but it was a detached sort of observation, as irrelevant as the state of the weather or the number of stars in the sky. She pretended he was one of her broken, bleeding soldiers, and he in turn pretended that he was still sleeping.

* * *

He’d better make it through this, Scully warned himself, because if he didn’t, he was on a greased track to hell. He couldn’t seem to help watching her, through lowered lashes, even though he knew he had no right. That sponge bath she’d administered had left him with every nerve pulsing outside his skin, and he’d used the last of his self-control just to keep from telling her how he felt. How he had no right to feel.

Now, here he was, looking on while the lady set her washtub in front of the kitchen stove, the warmest place in the house, and began heating what was probably the last of the water he’d carried in that morning from the spring. She laid her nightdress and a flour-sack towel over the back of one of the chairs. The little girl sat in the other, drawn up close to the table, working diligently at some lesson by the light of a kerosene lantern.