The talk about the work that would need to start in the village followed them as they walked the short distance from Downhill House to their own. The mud made tough going of it, but Birdie could have skipped, she was so delighted. Lily and Simon were home, and everyone was safe, and soon they’d be sitting together around the table.

She knew it was wrong to be so cheerful when so many people had lost so much, but it was hard. For days she had been so worried, but they were all home now—including Gabriel, who was married. That idea made her stop just where she was.

She hung back a little to take stock. Ma and Da were at the front of the line, then Jennet and Luke with their children, Hannah and Ben with theirs, Gabriel and Annie, who stopped more than once to whisper to each other, Daniel, Ethan, and best of all, Lily and Simon. It was a wonderful sight, but something was missing.

Martha.

“Ma!” she called. “We forgot Martha!”

“Go fetch her, then,” her mother called. “And don’t take no for an answer.”

That was easier said than done. Martha didn’t want to interrupt or interfere, and said she would sleep on the settle in Curiosity’s kitchen rather than get in the way.

“Ma said I was to fetch you,” Birdie told her again. “Do you want me to get in trouble? And anyway, my da’s your guardian, and how can he guard you if you’re all the way over here?”

She held out Martha’s boots, and after a moment’s hesitation, the older girl took them.

By the time they got to the house the fire in the hearth had been fed and the kettle was boiling, but there were no women in sight.

“Gone to put the little people to bed,” Ethan told them. “They’ll be back soon.”

Birdie tried not to show her disappointment. “Did Lily have to go too? And Annie?”

“Your nieces seemed to think so,” said Birdie’s father. “You could go up and join them, if you wanted. Both of you.”

What Martha thought of that idea they never found out, because the door swung open and everybody came back. Or everybody except Hannah and Jennet, who would still be busy answering questions and tucking in.

Birdie’s ma said, “Daniel, I’ve waited all day to hear your account of the flood. Are you too tired to tell it all again?”

They were all tired, but not one of them was willing to wait and so they talked in turns. Daniel and Ben had been right in the middle of things from the beginning, Daniel on one end of the village and Ben on the other. In the middle of their stories Jennet and Hannah came back to the kitchen and Hannah joined in.

“Birdie was a great help to me,” she said. “She was calm and she did exactly as I asked her. She has the makings of an excellent assistant. It’s true, Birdie. Why are you making such a face?”

It came bursting out of her then. “We can talk about the flood tomorrow,” she said. “We’ll be talking about it all summer. But I want to hear from Lily and Simon. I want to hear about their trip, and what took you so long to get back home, and what they brought in their trunks. Where are the trunks, anyway?”

Lily sat up straighter. “That’s a very good question. The last I saw of them was when we abandoned the wagons to walk up here.” Then she slumped back against the settle. “Not that I’d have the energy to go after them.”

“No need,” Ben told her. “We got them sorted through. They’re sitting in the kitchen in the house Ethan offered you, drying out in front of the hearth.”

And that was the first Birdie heard about Lily and Simon going to live in the house next to Ethan’s, the one folks called Ivy House. It struck her as a very bad idea, and she was about to say so when Lily smiled at her.

“I hope you will come and visit with me every day,” she said.

“After school,” Daniel prompted.

“And chores,” said her da.

“Yes, after school and chores,” Lily agreed. “But then you and I will have a lot to talk about, just the two of us.”

Birdie paused and rethought her arguments. It might not be so very bad to have Lily and Simon in a house of their own. There was a great deal to be said for privacy, and there would be precious little of it here over the next months.

“She likes the idea,” Jennet said. “Clever lass.”

Daniel was sitting beside Lily, leaning into her with the warm familiarity of a twin. He turned to her. “Now you,” he said. “Birdie there is about ready to bust, wondering what held you up so long. What’s this I hear about a hanging?”

Tea was poured and the biscuit tin appeared on the table, followed by cheese and bread and pickles, and more tea, and more talk. Elizabeth, as tired as she was, found it impossible to stay seated. She roamed back and forth, passing dishes, pausing to touch a shoulder or lay her hand on a head. This was not the way she had imagined Lily’s homecoming, but the most important thing was to have them all here, whole and healthy. This one summer they would have together, all of them. In the fall Luke and Jennet would go back to the city and maybe Lily and Simon would move on too. She must not let herself hope for anything more.

It was silly to borrow trouble; she knew that. She stood to fill the teapot, and Nathaniel caught her by the wrist and made her sit again.

“You’re as nervous as a cat,” Nathaniel said to her. His eyes moved over her face. He understood; he always did, when it came to the children. She wondered if today he had thought of the others, the sons they had lost as infants. Sometimes they talked of those boys, how old they would be now, and who they might favor. It was a comfort, that freedom to talk of children thirty years in their graves. To know that they were not completely forgotten.