She had tangled blond hair and enormous gray eyes.

Clara forced a smile.

“I may have come by mistake.”

Lucy stared at the carpet bag outside.

Then suddenly ran to Clara and wrapped both arms around her waist.

The room went still.

“Lucy,” Ethan said softly.

The child buried her face against Clara’s coat.

“Don’t go.”

Clara looked at Ethan.

He looked away first.

That was how she stayed the first night.

Then the second.

Then the third.

Clara learned the children slowly.

Annie was nine years old and forty years tired.

Every morning she rose before sunrise.

She tried to make biscuits.

She collected eggs.

She dressed Lucy.

She watched three-year-old Ben.

She washed clothes badly and apologized constantly.

Whenever Ethan entered a room, Annie would announce what work she had completed, as if presenting accounts to an employer.

On Clara’s fourth morning, she found Annie struggling to carry an iron kettle.

Clara took it from her.

“I can do it.”

“I know.”

“Mama said I’m responsible now.”

Clara crouched beside her.

“What else did your mama say?”

Annie hesitated.

“That I should help Papa.”

“Helping isn’t the same as becoming grown before you’re ready.”

Annie looked suspicious.

“Who will do everything?”

“I will do quite a lot of it.”

“But you might leave.”

The words landed quietly.

Clara understood then.

Annie did not fear hard work.

She feared trusting anyone who could disappear.

Clara touched her cheek.

“Today,” she said, “your responsibility is feeding the chickens and learning your multiplication tables.”

“I know multiplication.”

“Seven times eight?”

Annie frowned.

“Fifty-four?”

“Excellent. You clearly require emergency schooling.”

Annie almost smiled.

Almost.

Samuel was different.

Six years old.

Brown-haired.

Thin.

Watchful.

He had not spoken since his mother died eight months earlier.

Doctors had found nothing physically wrong.

Clara never asked him to speak.

She simply sat near him.

When she peeled potatoes, she gave him one.

When she mended stockings, she gave him tangled yarn to unwind.

When she made bread, she placed flour before him and let him shape small animals.

The first one looked like a deformed cow.

Clara examined it solemnly.

“A magnificent buffalo.”

Samuel’s mouth twitched.

The next day he made a better one.

Lucy was five and lived inside memories.

She remembered her mother’s songs.

Her lavender soap.

The blue dress she wore to church.

And the promise she had apparently made shortly before dying.

“Mama said she’d always find her way home.”

At night Lucy woke screaming.

Clara would run upstairs and find her standing at the window.

“Mama can’t see the house if the lamp is out,” Lucy insisted.

So Clara began leaving a lamp burning low.

Ben remembered almost nothing.

He had been two when Margaret Cole died.

He called Clara “Cawa” and climbed into her lap whenever he was tired.

Ethan was harder to understand.

He worked until darkness erased the fields.

Then he came inside and worked more.