Nicholas said, “What do we do if Ma starts to throw things at Hannah?”

“Hannah has been to war,” Birdie told him. “Hannah has been in the middle of battles, taking care of wounded men. It’s hard to get the best of Hannah.” She wished she felt as sure as she sounded. She wished Hannah would come out so they could go home. She wanted to be somewhere else, and not in this hall with its bright white curtains at the window and the polished rail. She didn’t want to be here when Hannah sat down with Nicholas and told him about how sick his ma really was.

And still it seemed like a very long time before Hannah came. To Birdie it seemed too as if Hannah had simply forgot they were waiting, because when she saw them she started.

“I’ll bring you back tomorrow to see your ma,” she told Nicholas. “Right now she is very tired and needs to sleep.”

Nicholas looked uncertainly between the door and Hannah, and then he nodded. “Can I go home with you and Birdie?”

Hannah closed her eyes briefly. Birdie had never seen her so tired, and she still had to go help Jennet have her baby.

She said, “I think Callie would be very worried if you didn’t come home first. Shall we go ask her? We can talk along the way.”

Birdie felt the sudden sting of tears in her eyes. To her sister she said, “I think the fireworks are done, so I’ll go fetch the little people and start home with them.”

Hannah touched her cheek. “Thank you,” she said softly. As if Birdie would want to be there when she told Nicholas that his ma was dying, and she was sacrificing something by leaving them.

Just at this moment Birdie couldn’t remember why it had seemed so important to talk to Jemima. She wished she never had.

Chapter LXIV

Daniel meant to go straight home to Martha; that had been his firm intention. And yet he found himself in the dark schoolhouse while outside the dancing and drinking and hollering rolled along like a rock down a hillside.

Blue-Jay and Ethan were crouched opposite him. It was the natural way for the three of them to talk. As boys they had handled every challenge and cooked up every scheme just like this. How to remove a pan of maple sugar from under Many-Doves’s watchful eye, where they might get nails for an addition to their fort, how they would fit chores around the smelt run, how to remind the Ratz boys that they had best keep clear of sisters, how many pups Blue was going to have and who had a claim to one.

They had been clever, almost as clever as they believed themselves to be. A few times they managed to get away with something small, though now, looking back, Daniel understood they had not got away with much at all. Parents had chosen their battles carefully, as was necessary with three boys as they had been. Full of ideas and energy, a combination that sometimes ended in high spirits, and sometimes in days of extra chores.

Now they were men. All three of them married, a thing Daniel had doubted would ever happen. He had doubted it for himself, and for Ethan. Both of them so cautious about the idea that it might have been avoided indefinitely. If not for Jemima Southern and the threat she posed, he wondered how long it would have taken for him to get down to business with Martha. Put aside his doubts and worries and ask her straight out if she wanted to be married to a one-armed schoolteacher.

He had thought Blue-Jay lucky, back when they were young and before the war. It was the Mohawk way for women to handle such things. A girl’s mother talked to a boy’s mother, and if the boy liked the idea, the girl had the final decision. It had worked that way with Terese; Blue-Jay had married her because he liked what he knew of her and she had wanted him. The trouble that followed was a lesson to all three of them, though Blue-Jay bore the brunt and then learned from that. The day after he first talked to Susanna Mayfair at Meeting, he had crouched down like this with Daniel and Ethan and made a plan, how he was going to pursue her and what he wanted out of that.

Now that Daniel had gone through it himself he understood better what he had only sensed before. It could go wrong no matter how you approached it, and if you wanted it to go right, it took a lot of work.

For Daniel and Ethan things had moved too fast, and they had never had the chance to talk like this. In fact, they hadn’t talked for a long time, since before the flood. Daniel realized how much he had missed these discussions.

Ethan was saying, “We have to do something.”

“She’ll be dead in a week,” Blue-Jay said.

“The damage she could do in a week is substantial,” Ethan said.

Daniel wondered exactly what kind of damage Ethan was worried about, but he kept that question to himself.

Blue-Jay studied the floor. “Are you saying we should put a bullet in her?”

Ethan was as angry as Daniel had ever seen him. It might have to do solely with Callie and Nicholas, but then Ethan had his own history with Jemima.

He gave a quick shake of the head: not that. Not yet.

“We could take her up to Lake in the Clouds,” Blue-Jay said. “She’d be out of troublemaking range, and Susanna would nurse her.”

Daniel said, “That would stretch even Susanna’s goodwill to the breaking point.”

“For you and me, sure. But Jemima has no power over Susanna.”

“Jemima will fight the idea,” Ethan said, but his tone was hopeful.

“We’ll tell her we’re taking her to Daniel’s,” Blue-Jay said. “And then we’ll just keep on going. She can holler her head off. It won’t matter.”

Within a quarter hour they had sorted out the details: Blue-Jay would head home now so that Susanna had time to make a chamber ready, and Daniel would go home to Martha to put her mind to rest about Nicholas. When the village was quiet, Ethan would bring Jemima up the mountain to Lake in the Clouds.