Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,62

a bit. “But I have people here, too.”

She poured water in the mug, and the steam rose from it like wet, white fire.

I watched her as if she were a bird perched on my finger. “I wish Daddy could have seen you out there.”

My mother looked at me through the steam. “Out where?”

“In the yard. Standing up to Larkin’s mother like that. Talking about Daddy and all he’s done.”

My mother made a face that was part rue, part something else. “If he’d been there to hear all that, I wouldn’t have had to say it in the first place.”

Which was true enough but not the whole story. “You might have added a thing or two about us, still here and all right no matter how long Daddy’s been asleep.” I paused, but she didn’t say anything. “How you yourself have managed.” I swallowed. “And Esther, too.”

And Larkin’s mother, I thought, years beyond when her own husband had gone to his rest.

I wondered if my mother would well up with the same kind of darkness if, years from now, my daddy still hadn’t come back to us or, worse, left us altogether.

As Esther had once said: If was quite a word.

My mother nodded thoughtfully.

I waited for her to say something about how I, too, had managed since my father’s accident.

“We have done our best,” she said. “But I fear that Esther and I are not meant for this kind of life.” She met my eye. “Not like you seem to be.”

Which was both praise and accusation. Not just what she said but how she said it. Enough bitterness to spoil the sweet.

“And that’s it?” I said. “We’re born to one thing and that’s it?” Of all the things she’d ever said to me, this was the most confounding.

“Of course not, Ellie. I hope we all have at least a little chameleon in us. But chameleons change to suit what’s around them, and it was the other way around in town.” She looked at her ruined hands. “I feel like a stranger in this new skin. I left behind too much of who I’ve always been, with not enough new to fill up what’s empty now. Not enough new that suits me.”

I thought about that.

“So it’s not just Daddy being asleep that makes you feel that way?”

She shook her head. “I’m stronger now because I have to be, and I suppose I should find some satisfaction in that.” She picked up her mug with both hands. “And I do, Ellie. But satisfaction doesn’t hold a candle to what I had before.”

I watched her drink her tea, her eyes closed.

“What would you call that?” I said.

“What I had before?”

I nodded.

“I don’t think there’s a word for it.” She paused. “I was who I was, without thinking too much about it.”

And I realized that she must have forgotten how it felt to be a girl untying a new ribbon, opening a new box every day, and finding, again and again, what it meant to change, to grow, all of it troubling and exciting and true.

Surely Esther knew how that felt.

As if she’d heard my thoughts, my mother said, “Esther is like me. Holding fast to who she’s always been. And what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Except . . . what about the other things she might become?”

“That’s Esther’s business.” My mother rose to her feet. “Not mine. Not yours.”

And I had no argument with that. Not if it was really true.

“Now go find out what’s taking your brother so long,” she said, turning away. “He could have grown those potatoes by now.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

I sat on the cabin step, lost in thought until Samuel came up from the root cellar, a basket of potatoes over his arm and a grin on his face.

“I saw a white spider as big as my hand. It was disgusting. Kinda squishy.”

“You didn’t kill it, did you?” I pictured the spider smashed into the root cellar floor like a spent star, dingy and dark.

“Don’t be foolish. Of course I didn’t kill it. I just touched it to see how it felt. It was disgusting.” He grinned some more. “I might want one for a pet.”

“Hmm. I bet Mother and Esther would love that.”

“No, they wouldn’t, Ellie,” he said, shaking his little head. “Mother’s right. You have lost your wits.”

“Do you want me to teach you how to make a potato poultice?” I said. “To make Daddy’s sores better?”

Samuel made a face. “A what?”

“Come inside. I’ll show you.”

Which I did,