I pull out my own knife and start scoring the rock. He goes to work beside me, and we have a comfortable silence with nothing but the scritch-scritching of our knives and the wind in the grass.

“Lee, I’m sorry I left.”

“What?”

“It’s been eating at me. Your parents had just been killed. You were my best friend, and you were in a bad way, and I abandoned you.”

I dig in harder and blunt the tip of my knife. It will need a good sharpening tonight. “You were in a bad way yourself. I didn’t blame you for leaving. Not one bit.”

“Truly?”

Well, maybe for a moment or two. “Truly.”

“It’s just . . . I did the thing I swore I’d never do.”

“I don’t understand.” But my knife stills as suddenly I do. Jefferson was abandoned too. “You swore you’d never leave someone, same way your mama . . . You were the eighth brother. The one who stayed.”

“And maybe I was a little mad. From when I asked you to . . . you know.”

“Marry you?” At his silence, I can’t help but add a stinging, “Or the part about pretending to be brother and sister?”

He winces. “I figured you were done with me.”

“I wasn’t done with you. I was just getting started with me.”

He snorts. “And have you finished with you yet?”

I clear gravel and dust from my lettering with a fingertip. “I don’t know, Jeff. People here actually like me and respect me, and that’s nice. But they don’t know who I really am, and truth be told, I’m not sure either.” For some reason, my stomach is tied up in knots. “Look, about that time, I’m sorry if I—”

“Stop saying that,” he says. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything.”

“Well, you don’t have to be sorry neither.”

I’ve got LE carved into the stone. I pause a moment, deciding.

I reach for Mama’s locket before remembering it’s not there anymore. I think of the afternoons we spent on my new Sunday dress. I think of Jefferson asking me to marry him, back when I was a girl. I lean forward and add an AH.

LEAH WESTFALL.

That name won’t mean anything to anyone in our wagon train, but it means something to me.

Jefferson pauses his own efforts to stare at my name. A tiny grin tugs at his mouth.

I ask, “You going to be Jefferson McCauley or Jefferson Kingfisher?”

“Jefferson McCauley Kingfisher,” he says brightly.

I sigh in mock despair. “We’re going to be here until the middle of the night.”

“Good thing this rock is big enough to be a mountain.”