Fillmore, Utah
JuLy 1860
Violet sighed in her sleep and rolled out from under Peach’s arm.
I stared down at them, feet rooted to the floor in the middle of the dark bedroom. My whole body was trembling, but I didn’t move to get back into bed.
Standing there while everyone slept, I put the ring on my thumb.
I already knew I was never going to take it off. It wasn’t Peach’s. It was Nancy’s.
And Nancy was me.
Why had I forgotten that? Forgotten everything?
My face was warm and wet as I blinked in the quiet room, but it didn’t feel like blood on my face anymore.
Just tears. Tears for Mama. For Papa. For Mary. For William. For Uncle Uri. For Sissy Lou. For baby Triphena.
I’d been hearing “Baby, try” in my dreams all this time, but now I knew better.
I now remembered it was “Baby Tri.” My cousin. Sissy Lou’s baby. I’d called her that. And I’d held her in my arms while the blood soaked through the quilt around us in the wagon.
I felt like the wind knocked out of me so hard that maybe I’d never be able to breathe again. I waited until the choking feeling passed, everything moving in slow motion. The memories flooding my mind were so bad, so awful, I thought I was going to die while they washed over me. It was worse than the nightmares. This was real, and it stung like poison.
Mama. Papa. Mary. William. Uri. Louisa. Baby Tri. Their names spun through my mind.
But as the tears ran down my face, some of that poison seemed to leak out with them. Then a new kind of burning took up in my heart as I remembered the man who sang me songs. Papa, I knew now.
And joy be to you all.
I closed my eyes and thought real hard. He had callused hands and a rich, deep voice. And my same blue eyes. And then I saw Mama in my mind. She had soft hands and a gentle voice. Her face was blurry in my memories, but her voice wasn’t. She’d recited poems and stories that lived somewhere in my bones, even if I couldn’t recall all the words anymore. I knew they’d kept me safe when I was hiding from the men who’d taken her—and the rest of my family—away from me.
She and Papa had my same dark, curly cowlicked hair.
And they loved me. They really, really loved me.
When the memories finally burst through the clouds in my mind, they were clear and bright, like sunshine after a storm. So sharp and detailed, they made the past three years of memories feel like a dream in comparison.
I found myself drawing a little closer to Peach on the side of the bed she shared with Violet.
These two loved me like we were sisters. Sisters who shared blood. But I was certain now that Peach knew we weren’t.
I knelt down, put my hand on her arm and leaned next to her ear, so I wouldn’t wake Violet. She smelled like sleep and apple preserves. My voice shook a little as I whispered, “Peach? Peach, wake up. Please.”
She rose up on one shoulder and rubbed sleep out of her eyes. I couldn’t see her face very well in the dark room, but I could tell her brow was furrowed. “Emma, go back to sleep.”
My voice wavered, but I forced the words out. “Tell me about when I got here, Peach.”
She didn’t answer right away. I pictured her blinking in surprise at the question.
I moved my hand into a slice of moonlight coming through the edge of the oilcloth around our window. The ring I now wore around my thumb—the ring Brother Robison had given her—glinted like the blade of a knife.
She drew in a breath and sat up in bed. “What are you doing? That’s my ring.”
I pulled away from her. “It’s my ring. It was my mama’s ring.” There were still holes in my memory—big ones—but I remembered that ring clear as day now. Like parts of my mind were still foggy, and I was just waiting for those rays of sunlight and memory to breakthrough a little at a time.
Mama loved that ring. Papa gave it to her when they got married.
Peach gasped. Her mouth hung open and I watched the understanding change her face from sleepy and upset to scared. “Your mama?”
“I don’t know how Brother Robison got it. But I know it was my mama’s.” I tucked my hands under my arms protectively, locking the ring tight in my grasp.
“Your mama’s?” Peach repeated, choking a little. Then she went silent for a few seconds. My heart beat faster. I needed to know what she remembered about how I’d gotten here. Those memories were still locked away. I knew they were there, but I couldn’t quite reach them.
“Tell me about the day I got here,” I insisted again.
“I’m not supposed to talk about that,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
“I’ll wake everybody up right now,” I said, feeling braver. “Ask them all myself.”
“No. No, they’ll be mad,” Peach said, reaching out a hand to stop me. Her voice shook. “Mama will get the willow switch.”
“She’s not my mama,” I hissed, drawing back, feeling every willow stripe she’d ever given me, every slight she’d ever made about me being wicked, every time she’d made me go to bed without dinner.
I didn’t know where the runaway anger was taking me, but I was ready for the ride.
Peach looked back at Violet then got up, grabbed my hand, and pulled me away from the beds and into the tiny closet at the far side of the bedroom. She closed the door behind us.
I couldn’t see her face anymore. The sliver of moonlight was gone. But I could hear her snuffling.
After a few minutes she spoke in a voice that didn’t sound much like Peach at all. Croaky and shaky and thick with tears. “You got here on my birthday. The day I turned thirteen. Papa told us you were only four years old, but—”
“I wasn’t four,” I interrupted her. “I was six. Almost seven.”
And now I was nine, almost ten years old. Not seven, almost eight. I knew now why I was so much taller than seven-year-old Adelia Robison, so “precocious” as Brother Larsen had said in Sunday school.
I knew it so clearly now. How was it possible I’d hidden all of these memories from myself so completely for the past three years?
Peach stared at me. “Mama said you were a birthday present, but you didn’t act like a present. You acted like a wild animal. We … we tried to give you a bath. You were all dirty … and bloody.”
I grasped around my mind in the raw, burning mess where the nightmares came from. Could I remember that?
The memory flashed, like lightning suddenly making the sky bright. I pictured myself sitting in our old metal wash tub, water pouring down my head while I cried and cried. A hand came past my mouth, trying to bathe me.
I bit it.
Then I threw up, because the blood in my mouth made me think about what had happened to Mama. To Mary and William and Uri and Louisa. To baby Tri, who they’d pulled me away from when the wagon reached the ranch.
They called me Emma. They told me that if I couldn’t forget what happened, they’d have to do to me like they did to Mama.
So I had to forget.
Peach was talking again, and I tried to focus on her words. “You kept screaming ‘try’,” when we got you in the bathtub, even though we were trying to help you. Over and over.”
“Tri, not try,” I whispered, knowing Peach wouldn’t be able to hear the difference. “When … When did the Robisons adopt Amina?”
Peach drew in a breath. “About a month after you.”
The images sloshed. I couldn’t grab the right one. They all burned so much.
“Emma?”
“My name is Nancy,” I choked out, grabbing hold of the memory burning hottest and refusing to let go even though I knew it would add to the pile of hurt. “And Amina’s name is Triphena. She’s my cousin.”
Peach was sniffling hard again. “How can that be? Mama said you came from Salt Lake. And Amina’s mama was dead. Papa and Brother Robison …”
I stopped listening to what she was saying, even though this was what I’d asked for. Another shifting, molten wall of memory crashed into me with her words.
“He’s not my papa,” I whispered. Then I sank to the floor of the closet so I wouldn’t fall.
Because now I remembered the first time I’d met him and Brother Robison.