Fillmore, Utah
JuLy 1860
Peach found me at the edge of the orchard, holding the little horse in one hand and the ring still clutched in the other.
“Sissy,” she said, her face red and puffy from crying. She wasn’t wearing her nightdress anymore, but she hadn’t bothered to comb her hair. She looked wild and unscrubbed and snarly. Like the way I felt most days.
Peach glanced from me to the Robisons’ house. “She’s theirs,” she said, and I knew she meant Triphena.
Then her face bunched up, and I could tell she was about to cry as she took a step closer and put her hand on my arm. “And you’re ours. Come home.”
So I let Peach lead me by the arm, like a lost lamb.
I didn’t unclench my hand. She didn’t try to take the ring away from me again.
Not-Mama would, though, when she got back home tonight.
She and Not-Papa were already gone for the day by the time we walked into the dusty yard. Violet was waiting on the porch, her face full of sunshine that clouded over when she saw me. I was supposed to be working. Every day except Wednesdays, I stayed in the fields from sunup to sundown.
“Emma?”
“She’s not feeling good, Violet,” Peach soothed, like she’d planned out what she was going to say. “We’re going to put her to bed so she can rest.”
Violet lifted an eyebrow. She was little, but she wasn’t stupid. The kind of sick that got you out of chores was the kind of sick that made getting out of bed impossible. “She doesn’t look sick.”
That was the moment my gut finally let go of the knot it’d been twisting, and I vomited what little I had in my stomach all over the front porch.
Violet scrambled to her feet. “Oh, no. Oh, no, Emma.”
“Hush, Violet,” Peach snapped, then gently took me by the arm. “It’ll be all right,” she told me, tucking the quilt around my body as I let her put me to bed.
I nodded, not meeting her eyes. For once, I felt sure I wouldn’t have nightmares anymore when I fell asleep. It didn’t feel like relief, though. Being awake was the new nightmare, and there was no escape from that.
They’re still with you. The words the Indian woman said still echoed in my ears, but I wasn’t sure I could believe them.
“I’ll bring you some water,” Peach began.
“No!” I cut her off. “Just … no.” Then I closed my eyes and curled into a ball on the bed. The shaky feeling that had gone away while I ran was back. My teeth chattered, even though I wasn’t cold, and my body shuddered like I had a fever, even though I wasn’t hot.
The bedroom door clunked shut.
It felt like my skin was too tight and my brain too full. Like if I shook for much longer, I’d burst right through it, spilling my insides out.
I wanted my mama. My real mama, alive again. Not the muttering, angry woman who would come back to me tonight.
Terror made me shake even harder as I imagined what she would do when she realized I knew the truth. The man I’d called Papa would disappear into himself, like he’d always done. Barely there. The woman I’d called Mama, on the other hand, would be angry.
I could almost hear the words she’d say. Ungrateful wretch.
How could I keep doing my chores, keep calling her Mama? I knew I had to, but the idea of doing any of those everyday things made me want to throw up all over again. I’d always been cowlicked and wild, but I’d tried my best to be a good girl. Tried my best to be sweet and obedient. I didn’t want to try anymore. I wanted to bite and kick and scream and run.
But there was nowhere to run. Like Peach said, this was my home now. You’re ours.
I squeezed my eyes shut harder and tried to begin a prayer in my mind, since my teeth were clenched too hard to speak out loud.
Dear Heavenly Father …
My mind went blank.
All I wanted was my mama.
I reached under the bed and found the second toy horse the Indian woman had given me, tucking it carefully under my arm with the first.
Then I kept my eyes squeezed shut and pretended that the soft pull of the quilt tucked around my shoulders was really arms hugging me tight.
Little by little, my breathing turned slower and my mind went blank.
And then I fell asleep.
And for the first time in my whole life, I had a dream I didn’t want to end.
“Mama,” I whispered through tears, and she kissed my head in response. I snuggled against her body and breathed in a smell I couldn’t identify but I wanted to memorize. I knew without looking that I was tucked behind the Robisons’ stove and that Triphena was tucked beneath her other arm.
And I knew without asking that she both was and wasn’t the mama I’d lost in the Meadow.
“You’re mine, and I love you,” she murmured. “Always have. Always will.”
And it felt so good to believe her.
* * *
I slept until I heard the sound of hoofbeats in the front yard.
The first thing I felt as I scrambled upright in bed was longing to fall back asleep. To stay tucked in that dream safe and sound.
The second was a burst of fear.
I’d slept all day long. Not-Mama and Not-Papa were home. What would happen now? I leaped to my feet, heart pounding hard again, determined they wouldn’t catch me in bed.
Peach was out there, and Violet. I could hear their high, sweet voices but couldn’t make out the words, except that they sounded afraid.
My chest seized and I looked around the tiny bedroom like a wild animal, spinning the ring on my thumb around and around.
There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide.
So I wouldn’t.
I balled my hands into fists and clenched my jaw until the fear let go.
Beloved, beloved, beloved.
With those words echoing in my ears, I pushed open the bedroom door, walked through the kitchen, and into the front yard, not bothering to put my boots on.
I wouldn’t let them find me cowering. If Not-Mama wanted to lash me, I’d hand her the willow switch and look her dead in the eye. I already hurt as much as a person could hurt.
But I wasn’t a wretch. And I wasn’t hers.
Beloved, beloved, beloved.
I took two steps into the front yard and stopped.
There was Peach, there was Violet. But instead of grown-ups I recognized, I saw two men on horseback and one standing on the ground, holding his horse’s reins in one hand and some kind of thin, black book in the other.
All three were wearing smart-looking blue uniforms. Everyone turned to look at me.
My face burned hot, and my mind felt foggy and slow. There was a wagon coming up behind the men on horseback—but not one I recognized. As the wagon came into view, I saw another Army man in a blue uniform, with a little girl sitting beside him on the bench seat.
Triphena, holding a little cloth doll, her puffy face streaked with tears.
As the wagon wheels stopped turning, the little girl scrambled down from the seat before the man holding the reins could stop her.
Then she ran to me and hugged my waist. I hugged her back hard, like I’d wanted to do when I stood outside her window that morning. She burrowed into my dress, tiny body shaking.
“I have a present for you,” I told her, realizing I was still clutching both toy horses in my hand.
Her eyes brightened for a moment as she took it, then buried her face in my dress again.
The Army man driving the wagon looked flustered, as if Tri wasn’t supposed to run away from him, but he didn’t go after her. The officer holding his horse by the reins glanced at the other men, then at Peach. After a few seconds, he walked toward me and Triphena.
He was holding something out to me—the thin, black book. He glanced at it one more time then held it out so I could see.
“Oh,” I breathed, the only sound I could make.
It wasn’t a book after all. It was a delicate photograph in a black velvet case, like one I’d seen hanging on the wall in the Robisons’ home. They were the only family in Fillmore who could afford to pay twenty-five cents when the photographer came through.
The thin paper tucked into the velvet case looked so delicate, I didn’t want to touch it for fear of hurting it. But I couldn’t keep my fingers from hovering over the top.
The Army man didn’t try to stop me.
In the photograph was a family.
My family.
In the middle, sitting on some kind of bench, was Papa. Taller than any of us by a head. Curly, dark hair and pale eyes that seemed to look right through into my soul. Mary leaned against him on one side, William on the other. James stood behind him, one hand resting on Papa’s shoulder.
My eyes moved to Mama, her dark hair curled around her ears in thick, graceful ribbons. And on her lap was a little girl, frowning in concentration, wrapped up in a frozen hug.
The little girl looked just like Triphena.
It wasn’t Triphena though, it was me.
Nancy.
A new memory leaped through the fog. Only this time, it didn’t burn.
I remembered sitting for that photo. We’d had to stay perfectly still for what felt like forever—sixty seconds, the camera man counted. Papa told me I’d done a very good job, and I knew I had. If I’d had to sit on the bench by myself, I would have wiggled. But I could relax against Mama’s chest, and I knew she’d keep both of us still.
Before I could say a thing, the officer handed me another slim velvet case.
Another photograph.
A tall man with a thick, fluffy beard, a bald head, and a smart black vest. He stood with his arm on the shoulder of a seated woman. At first, I didn’t know him. Then my eyes flicked to the woman, the tilt of her nose and the rise of her cheeks familiar to me before I could remember the word I’d called her. It hovered in the back of my mind then whispered through.
Nana.
She was my grandmother. And the man was my grandfather. These were Papa’s parents. The ones we’d left behind when we packed up our wagon in Arkansas. I couldn’t pull a single memory to the surface of what their voices sounded like or what kind of grandparents they’d been, but I knew they’d loved me, sure as anything.
“Do you know those people?” the Army man was saying. I blinked and looked up at him. His voice was gentle, but his face was as stern and unsmiling as the people in the photographs.
“Yes,” I managed. “That’s my mama and my papa and Mary and William and James.” I pointed out each person in the first photograph, then looked at the second.
Triphena lifted her head from my dress for the first time to look, too.
Her eyes went wide as she studied the photograph of my family. “Papa?” she whispered haltingly, her tiny hand pointing out the man who wasn’t her papa but was the spitting image of Uncle Uri.
Peach drew in a sharp breath. It was the first time any of us had heard the little girl speak.
I swallowed hard. “Yes, your papa looked just like that.”
Triphena looked directly at me, her eyes wide as saucers.
I pointed to my own chest. “Nancy,” I told her, knowing the word she was searching for.
“Nancy,” she said, like my name had been just waiting for her to find it.
I burst into tears all over again and hugged her tight, because I didn’t know what else in the world to do.