Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,57

know what to do about that.”

At which Cate turned from the wall.

I wondered how much she’d heard.

She reached for Larkin, who went to her.

“None of that is your fault,” she said, and I knew she’d heard it all.

Thoughts of my own father, my own mother, rose up like bread. “I should be getting home.”

Cate nodded. “You’ll do your father good, being there.”

I turned to go.

She said, “You never said how he ended up in a coma.”

And I didn’t much want to tell the story now. But after what Larkin had just told me . . .

“He was cutting down a tree. It hit him on the way down.” I didn’t bother telling them the rest. It had nothing to do with how long my father had been asleep.

“Where did the tree hit him?”

“In the garden,” I replied. “We were—”

“No, not that where,” she said impatiently. “Where on his head did it hit him?”

“Oh. Here.” I tapped the top of my head.

She nodded. “He may be right as rain after a while. The body is sometimes its own best doctor. But you may need to teach him how to talk again. And walk. And he may be . . . different now. Not quite who he was before. And he may not remember some things.”

Four mays, and only one of them good. The other three were a mountain range I did not want to climb.

“How do you know that?” I said in a voice far too small for any business involving mountains.

“Larkin just told you. I was a nurse.” She frowned thoughtfully. “The brain’s like the world. Every part of it has a way of doing things. But you won’t know what you know until you know it,” she said. “Your father will come back to himself slowly, and along the way you’ll find out how to help him.”

“Like with your leg?” I said. “We just wait and see and figure out what to do when the time comes?”

She nodded. “Exactly right.” She pushed away her blanket and laid her hand on the bandage. “It’s not too hot. And my fever is gone. So we’ll let it be for now.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow and help you with a bath, if you like,” I said. “Larkin is going to do your wash now, and I told him to leave the water after. I’ll come back and add some hot when you’re ready.”

If I’d wanted to surprise Cate, I’d succeeded. I could tell from the look on her face. But she didn’t say a word.

Larkin said, “You can rest in a chair while I change your bedding.”

Which made Cate gaze at him fondly. “You’ll need a good bit of water, and hot, for the wash.”

“I’ll get some going.”

“And I’ll bring bread when I come back,” I said. “Mother makes good corn bread.”

“Which she won’t want to share with an old witch like me,” Cate said, some thistles in her voice.

I thought she might be wrong.

Now that I had a story to share with my mother, she was sure to find in it a reason to be generous with what little we had.

Especially now that my father was awake, and her own wound surely healing.

* * *

—

When I got back home, I stopped in at the woodshed and found the puppies all back in their nest and sleeping alongside Maisie, who scrambled to her feet when she saw me.

“Are you a very fine girl?” I said, rubbing her ears and kissing her on the head. “Are you my very fine girl?” She answered with a whimper, her tongue just kissing the tip of my nose before she returned to the nest and curled up again with her litter.

“Wake up soon, Quiet,” I whispered. “We don’t have much time left.”

But with my father awake again, I found myself hoping that other things might have changed as well.

Chapter Forty-Three

I expected the cabin to be as I’d left it.

My mother smiling again. Singing again as she worked. Esther on her way back to kindness. Samuel that much farther from the boy who had chased a rabbit into such long, sad trouble.

But when I went through the door, I found the kitchen empty, the cabin quiet but for the sound of Esther’s voice.

I followed it to find everyone clustered around my father as he lay sleeping.

Samuel was curled up beside him, my mother by the window, watching. Both of them listening as Esther read a book out loud.

Which was when I began to be afraid again.

My mother wasn’t