She met young Mordecai, who already bore some of the marks of his Lewis name. “You’re a fine-looking young man,” she told him. “You’d do your granddaddy proud.”

Mordecai was shy and ill at ease at the appearance of these relatives who were strangers to him. “Thank you, ma’am.” Annie met the small girl named Angeline and started to ask where the baby was, then suddenly remembered a letter telling that Michael and Marie had lost it. It had seemed unreal to Annie at the time she had received word, to have lost a little niece she had never seen. It was real now.

She came then to Andrew’s Petra, and their two young ones. Annie said, “I met your mother and your brothers a few days ago. And your sister Juanita.”

Petra forced a smile, as ill at ease as Mordecai had been. “It is good. You like them, I hope.”

“Very much. And I’ll love you, too, Petra.” She reached down for the baby girl and lifted her up into her arms. “You and your little ones. Everybody! We’re all goin’ to be family.” She watched Frank and Hope and their boys gather around to be introduced one by one, and she felt a warm glow rise from within.

Yes, she was home. Tennessee was in the past. This was Texas, it was now, and it was home. She had a strong feeling that it would be home for as long as she lived.

MARIE AND Petra had started supper. Annie pitched in to help, despite their protests that she was company and should rest after the long trip. “I’m not company. I’m family.”

She listened, she asked questions, she tried to study her two sisters-in-law for some idea of who they were as individuals. She had quickly seen the Villaret features in Marie, and Petra was a slightly older version of the girl Juanita Moreno. Marie was darker in complexion than the women Annie was used to in Tennessee, and Petra was a little darker even than Marie. Marie’s English was better, tinged though it was with Louisiana French. Petra struggled to make herself understood, and Annie resolved to try never to smile when Petra’s words came out backward. One might laugh with family, but never at them.

In the course of the talk Petra mentioned that her milk cow had disappeared shortly after Andrew had left to try to find Annie and James and the rest. Michael and Mordecai had hunted for her but had had no luck. For a cow to stray was not strange under ordinary circumstances, but this one had a calf, kept penned up behind the shed. It was unusual for one to go off far and leave a calf behind.

At length Annie heard a dog bark. Curiosity took her to the door, where she stood with a dish-drying cloth folded over her arm. Out beyond the dog-run she saw a man approaching on horseback. She stepped outside, shading her eyes with her hand and looking around to see where the Lewis men had gone. She saw Michael and Andrew walking up from the pens, James and Frank trailing along behind them.