Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,48

now you want to go help a stranger when she already has that boy to help her.”

“She’s not a stranger,” I said, which had been true from the moment I laid eyes on her. “And, even if she were, she’d be just as sick. And Larkin just as much one boy all alone with her.”

“Nonetheless. It’s not safe for you to go up there, Ellie.” She put a lid on the stew. “Not on your own.”

“Then come with me. Just to check on Miss Cate. Just to make sure she’s all right.”

She looked at me with wide eyes. “Do you honestly think I’m going to do that?”

“But she’s sick, Mother.”

Samuel said from the doorway, “One of the puppies peed on the apron.”

My mother gave me a last look, filled with disappointment.

“That’s what puppies do.” She wiped her hands on a rag. “They don’t know any better.”

When she followed him toward the bedroom, I did, too. “Why can’t he clean it up?”

“Who, Samuel?”

“Yes, Samuel. If a boy can be a doctor, why can’t a boy clean up dog pee?”

“I don’t want to be a doctor,” Samuel said. “Who said I wanted to be a doctor?”

My father was still sleeping when we went into the room.

One of the puppies had found his neck and was nesting against it.

Another had draped itself over his arm.

A third was licking his hand, its tongue a tiny pink petal.

And Quiet, the dog who had started so much, was sound asleep on his chest.

“Oh, well, that’s a sight,” my mother whispered, smiling.

She folded the wet apron over on itself and gave it to me to take outside for washing. “Go get Esther,” she said softly. “She should come see this.”

My father was still deeply asleep, his mouth parted, his arms limp at his sides.

It could be hours before he woke again. And when he did, he would need me much less than he had before.

I went outside.

My sister was hanging laundry on the line, humming as she worked, her face happy.

“Mother says to go on in and see the puppies with Daddy,” I said.

Esther looked up at me, smiling, as she pinned up the last of the wash and then headed for the cabin, the empty basket swinging in her hand.

I stood in the sun for a moment, thinking.

“What am I supposed to do?” I said aloud, though I was alone.

But the sky was busy being the sky. And the trees were busy being trees. And the birds, likewise, were busy being exactly who they were.

Which was, in itself, an answer.

So I made up my mind to listen to the flame in my chest, which sighed and roared and sighed again like a long piece of music I knew by heart but still seemed to be hearing fresh.

I went into the woodshed to fetch my jacket. Took the little wooden bee from the pocket and put it on the high shelf with the other gifts Larkin had given me.

Then I took the jacket with the apron to wash under the well pump. Wrung them out. And put the jacket back on, wet as it was. The cold was like a slap. but when the jacket dried, it would take the shape of me. Just so.

Then I hung the apron on the line, went back into the cabin, filled a jar with venison stew, and stirred in some cold water from the pump so I could add a lid. Took it out to the woodshed and switched it for the jar of willow bark tea in my pack.

And headed back up the mountain, with plenty of daylight left.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Captan came to meet me at the steepest part of the path.

“How is she?” I asked as I climbed toward him.

He blinked an answer.

He came forward to sniff my boots. It was the first time he’d come so close to me.

When he looked up again, I read a bunch of questions in his eyes.

“Yes, that’s puppy you smell. That’s Quiet. When he’s old enough, I’ll bring him to meet you.”

But then I remembered once again that Quiet was meant for Mr. Anderson.

“Maybe I’ll bring him up here to live.”

When I reached my hand out, palm up, Captan rested his soft jowl in it for just a moment and then turned to lead the way to Cate’s cabin.

And I stood there on the path, ringing hard and loud with the feel of his face lingering on my hand, along with something more about loneliness and a sore heart and what a