Echo Mountain - Lauren Wolk Page 0,87

be paid either way.” I thought about what I had to give in trade. I looked at my mother’s mandolin.

“No,” Cate said. “Not that. Not for me.”

And I remembered another of the hundred questions I had not yet asked her. “Larkin said he used to help his father make mandolins. Doesn’t he want to be a luthier, too?”

At which Cate closed her eyes. “I asked him that very thing. But all he said was ‘Maybe someday.’”

I thought of what else we could use to pay the doctor. “Have you no wedding ring?”

“Gone,” she said. “In trade. Long since.”

I thought about the years since Larkin’s father had died. The crash that had made those years even harder.

“The doctor won’t know that we have no way to pay him,” I said. “Until he’s already here.”

“And if you fool him like that, he’ll never come back here again.” She reached out to scratch Captan between the ears. “Cry wolf and you won’t have him next time.”

“Then we’ll do what we can without him. But right now, no wait-and-see this time.” I remembered the other things she’d tried. “Can I pour in some hot vinegar?”

She considered that. “I don’t know what it will be like to pour it into an open wound. And we don’t want to melt the honey away.”

“Then I’ll keep the cut mostly closed for now, to hold the honey in. And I’ll build a . . . a dam around the cut and fill it with vinegar so it seeps in slowly and doesn’t spill away.”

She watched me without saying a word.

I thought about the possibilities.

There was a candle next to the bed. But I’d been burned by candle wax before, and I was not eager to give Cate a new hurt trying to heal an old one.

So I closed my eyes and listened to myself for a while, letting my mind tick through the possibilities, until I came to one I liked, for more reasons than one, all of them good.

* * *

—

I found my mother in the kitchen, tucking balsam chips into pouches.

“I need an old pot you might never be able to use again,” I said.

She frowned at me. “Pots don’t grow on trees,” she said. “Are you making something for your father?”

“Not right now. This is for Cate.”

“For Mrs. Cleary?”

I was amazed that she saw a distinction.

“Yes,” I said.

My mother gave me a long look.

Just days before, she had sent me to the shed to sleep with the dogs, my belly as empty as a hat on a hook, for trying to wake my father. Now, with only a little pause, she fetched an old, blackened pot and handed it to me without another word.

I wondered if she was so willing because I had earned some trust . . . or because I was now trying to heal Cate instead of my daddy.

I decided it didn’t matter.

I carried the pot back to where Cate lay waiting.

She watched me carefully as I took out my knife and sliced away a broad strip of deer hide from her leggings.

She said nothing out loud, though her face made a comment or two, especially her eyebrows, before it settled into a smile.

“Larkin told you some things about his father’s luthing, didn’t he?”

“He did,” I said, wiping my knife on my sleeve and folding it away.

I draped the deer hide over my arm and picked up the old pot.

“This will take a while,” I said.

“Not so long if you boil it hard,” she replied. “An hour over a fire is all you’ll need, though be ready to stir it right along.” She smiled sadly. “It would be different if I were a mandolin. For that, all night long, slowly, in an oven, works best.”

I didn’t say, We don’t have all night long. Nor did I say, You’re not a mandolin. I said, “Close your eyes and rest while I do this. Captan’s here, and I don’t imagine he’ll leave you.”

* * *

—

Esther was in the kitchen with my mother when I came back through on my way to the yard.

“How’s Larkin?” I said, though I didn’t like to be the one asking . . . or her the one answering.

“He’s sad and angry and ashamed of himself,” she said. “For you being the one who’s helping her.”

So I was not the only one feeling out of sorts about such things.

I wanted to go find him, right then, to tell him that I understood . . . and to be the one