He pressed the little bottle into her hands and Winnie took it, closing her fingers over it. “Jesse, wait!” she whispered breathlessly, for all at once she had the answer. “I can help! When your mother climbs out the window, I’ll climb in and take her place. I can wrap myself up in her blanket, and when the constable looks in, he won’t be able to tell the difference. Not in the dark. I can hump up and look a lot bigger. Miles can even put the window back. That would give you time to get away! You’d have at least till morning!”

Jesse squinted at her, and then he said, “Yep—you know, it might work. It might just make the difference. But I don’t know as Pa’s going to want you taking any risk. I mean, what’ll they say to you after, when they find out?”

“I don’t know,” said Winnie, “but it doesn’t matter. Tell your father I want to help. I have to help. If it wasn’t for me, there wouldn’t have been any trouble in the first place. Tell him I have to.”

“Well…all right. Can you get out after dark?”

“Yes,” said Winnie.

“Then—at midnight, Winnie. I’ll be waiting for you right here at midnight.”

“Winifred!” an anxious voice called from the cottage. “Who’s that you’re talking to?”

Winnie stood up and turned to answer. “It’s just a boy, Granny. I’ll be in in a minute.” When she turned around again, Jesse was gone. Winnie clutched the little bottle in her hands and tried to control the rising excitement that made her breath catch. At midnight she would make a difference in the world.

23

It was the longest day: mindlessly hot, unspeakably hot, too hot to move or even think. The countryside, the village of Treegap, the wood—all lay defeated. Nothing stirred. The sun was a ponderous circle without edges, a roar without a sound, a blazing glare so thorough and remorseless that even in the Fosters’ parlor, with curtains drawn, it seemed an actual presence. You could not shut it out.

Winnie’s mother and grandmother sat plaintive all afternoon in the parlor, fanning themselves and sipping lemonade, their hair unsettled and their knees loose. It was totally unlike them, this lapse from gentility, and it made them much more interesting. But Winnie didn’t stay with them. Instead, she took her own brimming glass to her room and sat in her little rocker by the window. Once she had hidden Jesse’s bottle in a bureau drawer, there was nothing to do but wait. In the hall outside her room, the grandfather’s clock ticked deliberately, unimpressed with anyone’s impatience, and Winnie found herself rocking to its rhythm—forward, back, forward, back, tick, tock, tick, tock. She tried to read, but it was so quiet that she could not concentrate, and so she was glad when at last it was time for supper. It was something to do, though none of them could manage more than a nibble.