She removed the pressure. The cotton was red but the cut wasn’t bleeding anymore.

“I’ve never heard that before,” I said.

She wrapped the bandage around my finger. “Becky Anderson,” she said. “Foster mother number three. For a little while I thought she might keep me.”

Then she turned her back to me and finished her slicing. And I wanted to ask her to tell me more, wanted to confess that I had once shared those hopes. Had we all? I didn’t know. But something in her posture, in the way she was suddenly humming a song as though to tune me out, told me that the moment had ended. So, it was back to dinner prep for us, not speaking unless it was to check the recipe.

But once everyone was seated on the benches around the massive kitchen table, spooning their soup and thanking us, Liz caught my eye from across the table and gave me a smile that was nothing if not genuine. It was warm, even. And I thought maybe I should have asked her more after all.

____________

It was Sunday, market day. In the predawn darkness I’d awakened to the sound of Billy and Liz shuffling past my cabin. I’d heard them again a little later—in the shutting of the truck’s doors, the rumbling of its engine, its wheels down the gravel road and away—before I’d fallen back to sleep.

And now it was light, and I was awake again. I left my cabin, hurried through the cold to the tub, where I let the hot water run and run, stripped off my pajamas, and stepped in. I soaked there as the fog hung heavy in the sky and the steam rose around.

I was lonelier than ever.

Eventually, I wrapped myself in my robe and returned to my room to build a fire. I had become used to the stacking of logs and twigs. The crunch of the newsprint, the strike of the match. I felt myself warm again, little by little, and then I looked at the clock and found it was not even ten in the morning. All the hours of the day stretched before me. Billy and Liz would be at the market. Terry and Julia had taken everyone else to town. I would need something to occupy myself.

I cooked a meal in the quiet kitchen and decided to call Karen. She’d been a constant for so long—the person I knew I could rely on—so it felt strange to have gone that many days without hearing her voice.

“Tell me everything,” she said when she answered.

For a few minutes, as I told her about Lee and our lessons, the house and the animals, the high schoolers and the children, I was less alone.

“How are Terry and Julia?”