Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,61

me in her lap with a doll and a book.

But mean was mean. And it wasn’t any more useful to Esther than it was to me.

“I won’t,” I said. “I won’t want to get off this mountain. And if I do, I’ll find a way to go.”

“Now hush, the both of you,” my mother said. “Nobody’s going anywhere. Esther, what’s gotten into you? Ellie didn’t make us poor. And Samuel, Esther’s not mean. She’s just mad. Because she’s fifteen. And don’t ask me to explain that, but you’ll understand when you get there.”

“Then I don’t want to be fifteen,” Samuel said.

“That has nothing to do with it,” Esther said. “It’s this place. It’s snakes that come up in the washroom. And mice in the grain. And spiders in the privy. And everything, Mother. And you know it, too.”

“I know no such thing,” my mother said.

“But you do! You know Daddy’s gone again. Because of a stupid tree that he shouldn’t have had to cut down. For what? To make a bigger garden? When we should be able to go to market and buy whatever we need?”

“He woke up once. He’ll wake up again.”

“And if he doesn’t? No matter what kind of potion Ellie tries next?”

“Esther, stop.” My mother looked as if she might cry. “You’re just cold from a long winter.”

“And the one before that,” Esther said. “And the one before that. But that doesn’t make me wrong.”

She went back to the room where my father lay sleeping.

I thought of Cate in the midst of a blizzard, shaken by the screams and wails of a storm as it rolled over the mountain.

“Maybe I should take Esther up to Miss Cate’s cabin,” I said. “Maybe she’ll like ours better after that.”

“She’s just upset.” My mother sighed. “We’re all just upset. To have your father back for such a short time. Almost worse than if he hadn’t woken up at all.”

I disagreed. “He woke up once. He’ll wake up again, just like you said.”

My mother nodded. “I hope so.”

“And tomorrow I’m going back to see Miss Cate. She knows a lot about how to make people well, and she has books. There are plenty of other things we can try.”

Samuel said, “I want to go see Larkin.”

“You’ll stay right here,” my mother said. “Now fetch some potatoes from the root cellar. I’ll mash them for supper.”

She had not said that I couldn’t go back up to Cate’s. She had not said anything about locking me in the woodshed. She had not said that I was entirely too wild and willful.

Something was changing. I could feel it.

Chapter Forty-Six

When Samuel had left the kitchen, I said, “You miss town, too.”

My mother looked at her hands. They were rough and red and split at the knuckles.

After a long moment, she said, “I do, Ellie. Every day.”

“The house we had?”

“That.” She took her apron off its hook and put it on. “Lots of things.” She closed her eyes. “I miss being a teacher.”

I remembered what Larkin had said. “You’re still a teacher.”

Which made her smile for a moment. “I suppose I am. But I miss the people. Molly Peterson is nice enough, but I had real friends in town, Ellie. The other teachers at the school. The choir at the church. We had neighbors close by. Even the people I didn’t know well, I still knew. Mr. Turner, the butcher, used to tell me a new joke every time I went into his shop. That nurse, in Bethel. Mrs. Cleary: I liked her a lot. She used to call you Rapunzel, for all that long hair you used to have. Remember all those trips to Bethel when Esther had her earaches? Mrs. Cleary was so kind to Esther. To all of us.”

At which a seed began to sprout in my startled brain, and I sat up straighter in my chair.

“And so was Mrs. Stark,” she said, pulling me back. “The grocer’s wife. So kind. Did you know she lost four babies, one right after the other? But she still smiled every time I walked in the door with you children.”

“I remember,” I said slowly. Distracted. “She gave us peppermints.”

“She did. Every time she saw you.” My mother thrust a log into the stove.

She pulled a mug from the cupboard and measured some balsam chips into a scrap of rag. Dropped the pouch into the mug and stood quietly, gathering wool, as the kettle began to tick and rumble.

“Yes, I miss town,” my mother said quietly, after