Fear.
“Somebody has to do things.”
“Yes.”
Mercy stepped closer.
“Somebody does.”
She took the axe.
“But it doesn’t always have to be you.”
Caleb stared at her as if she had spoken a foreign language.
Mercy split the next log cleanly.
His eyebrows rose.
“Where’d you learn that?”
“I was capable.”
He frowned.
Then he understood.
For the first time, Caleb Bell laughed.
Only once.
But it was enough.
During the weeks that followed, Mercy did not attempt to become the boys’ mother.
That was the first thing they noticed.
She did not move Ruth Bell’s Bible from the sitting-room shelf.
She did not take down the faded apron hanging inside the pantry.
She did not ask Thomas to remove his wife’s photograph from the mantel.
Most importantly,
she never asked Ben to surrender the rag doll.
Instead, Mercy created rules.
Everyone worked.
Everyone washed.
Everyone ate at the table.
No boots upstairs.
No knives thrown indoors.
This final rule was introduced after Eli and Asa attempted to kill a spider by hurling a hunting knife into the wall.
“It was a large spider,” Asa explained.
“It was smaller than a nickel,” Mercy said.
“It had intentions.”
Mercy confiscated the knife.
By the end of her third week, the house had changed.
Not transformed.
Changed.
There were clean shirts hanging near the stove.
Fresh bread every other day.
Curtains washed and returned to the windows.
Someone had repaired the broken chair in the corner.
Someone else had scrubbed years of soot from the stove.
Mercy refused to do everything herself.
“You’re not servants,” Thomas told the boys one evening when they complained.
Mercy looked at him.
“No.
They’re worse.”
Seven offended faces turned toward her.
“They’re family.”
Thomas stared.
Mercy continued peeling potatoes.
“Servants get wages.”
Jonah laughed so hard he nearly fell backward.
The boys began bringing Mercy things.
Not gifts exactly.
Evidence.
Noah brought her a blue stone he found beside the creek.
Levi left three eggs near her mixing bowl without explanation.
The twins delivered a dead rabbit to the kitchen and announced that supper had arrived.
Caleb repaired the loose hinge on her bedroom door while pretending he had been passing by with tools.
Ben simply began sitting closer.
First across the room.
Then beside the stove.
Then on the kitchen floor while Mercy worked.
One snowy afternoon, he brought the rag doll downstairs.
He placed it on the table.
“The arm’s coming off.”
Mercy dried her hands.
“Would you like me to fix it?”
Ben nodded.
She did not reach for the doll until he pushed it toward her.
That mattered.
Mercy threaded a needle.
Ben watched every stitch.
“Her name’s Daisy.”
“Pretty name.”
“Mama made her.”
Mercy’s hand slowed.
Ben touched the faded blue dress.
“She made Daisy before Noah was born.”
Mercy kept sewing.
“Then your mother must’ve been clever.”
“She was.”
The words came immediately.
Certain.
