Chapter One
“But you must remember something,” Kate called from where she was propped up on the sofa in the front room of the Kerwyn farmhouse.
“Honestly, Kate, I don’t,” replied a frazzled Mrs. Kerwyn, who was busy churning wet shirts through the kitchen laundry press.
“Louisa, go out and bring in some more wood. If we don’t get that stove hotter, these’ll never dry.
” She pulled her gaze from the tub of dirty suds and inspected the clothes hanging from temporary crisscrossing lines.
Louisa dropped the socks she was folding and let out a disgruntled harrumph. “Why can’t Kate? It’s not as if it’s taxing to walk outside and grab a couple of logs.”
“In this weather? She’d catch her death again. Go on.”
Despite the fact that Louisa was all of twenty, she stuck her tongue out at Kate before moving toward the back door and pulling on a pair of black rubber farm boots. She didn’t bother to buckle them.
“Mom, I can help,” Kate insisted and set aside the afghan that Mrs. Kerwyn herself had tucked tightly around her legs. Kate had no real desire to ease the burden of her lazy older sister, but she was sick to death of lying around.
When she stood, however, she did feel a little weak. Leaning one hand on the arm of the sofa to steady herself, she glanced quickly at her mother, hoping she hadn’t noticed.
“Oh no you don’t!” Mrs. Kerwyn exclaimed over her shoulder. “You lie back down. You know what Doc Hodges said.”
“I know, Mom, but I’ve been lying in bed for nearly two months. If I don’t walk around a little, I’m going to forget how.” She concentrated on not wobbling as she made her way to the kitchen.
“Pneumonia is tricky, Kate.” Mrs. Kerwyn kept her weak gray eyes on the rollers, careful not to get her fingers caught.
“Takes a long time.” Mrs. Kerwyn might have been considered pretty at one time, but her frizzled strawberry blonde hair had thinned, as had her frail body, and her eyes now had permanent dark circles under them.
Kate pulled out a kitchen chair and eased herself down.
“Well, I’ll just sit here, then. How about that?
” She picked up the socks Louisa had dropped, folded them, then rummaged through the rest of the clothes on the table to find more.
She knew she couldn’t push her mother too hard, as Caroline Kerwyn was overly protective when it came to sickness, having had two children die from the flu during the epidemic eight years ago.
It had been hard on all of them to lose Eula and Fern, but it had been hardest, of course, on poor Mrs. Kerwyn, who, in Kate’s opinion anyway, had never been quite the same. May had also left to marry her sweetheart, Will Dresden, that year, which had further added to the family’s sense of loss.
“Well, do you?” Kate asked, pulling a few small towels out of the pile.
Mrs. Kerwyn eased a wet shirt out of the rollers and shook it. “Do I what?”
“Don’t you remember anything else from when you found me? What was I wearing?” Kate asked, hoping the answer might provide a clue as to her origins.
“Lord, Kate. How should I know?” Mrs. Kerwyn reached into the bag of clothespins and began pinning the wet shirt to the line. “That was fifteen years ago.”
“You’re not talking about all this again, are you?” Louisa banged through the back door and dropped an armload of logs onto the empty wrought-iron rack. She then pounded the snow from her boots on the braided rug, a few strands of her long blond hair coming loose from the bun she normally wore.
Kate gritted her teeth. “Yes, we are, Louisa. No one asked you to be a part of it, so you can mind your own business.”
“Why does it matter so much to you?” Louisa shrugged out of her coat and hung it on the peg by the back door.
It was a good question. Why did it matter?
Kate supposed she just wanted to know, definitively, to whom she had once belonged.
She had grown up thinking that she was a Sauk Indian, but, according to nearly every book on the subject in the Merriweather Library, the Native Americans were very family-oriented, loyal, and honorable, despite their reputation for being vicious, bloodthirsty savages.
It seemed impossible that they had simply abandoned her.
Had they meant to leave her behind like some sort of cursed creature?
Or had she wandered away and gotten lost?
But if that were the case, why had they not searched for her?
And how had she come to be wandering by the Wareham farm?
As a child, she had been happy enough as a Kerwyn, but as she grew older, it became more obvious that she did not belong, not just in her looks but in her temperament.
“You were wearing a brown shift, I think,” Mrs. Kerwyn mumbled, a clothespin between her lips.
“And there was nothing on the ground near me? A blanket maybe? A basket?” Kate looked from her mother to Louisa.
“Don’t look at me!” Louisa exclaimed. “I was five, so no, I didn’t notice. What are you hoping for? A tidy little basket with a letter outlining your name and family history, complete with a desperate appeal to ‘take care of our darling child’?”
Kate threw her a wicked look. “Why are you such a shrew, Louisa? It’s no wonder you aren’t married yet.”
“Me? You’re one to talk! At least I have Vernon. You’ll never find a man with all that vinegar in your veins!”
Kate opened her mouth to deliver a blistering retort when there was a quick rap on the back door, and Edmund ducked in.
“Oh, Ed!” Mrs. Kerwyn set down her bag of clothespins. “You and Gus done already?” She wiped her hands on her apron and glanced nervously at the clock on the wall. “Good gracious! I haven’t even started supper yet.”
“No, Mrs. K, Mr. K sent me in for a thermos of coffee. Said to tell you it’s gonna take a little longer to rebuild that stall than he thought.”
“Well, here, sit down by the stove and warm yourself. Louisa, make some coffee.”
Louisa let out a deep sigh and rolled her eyes before doing as she was bid.
Edmund’s brown eyes grew large at the sight of Kate, half hidden behind the pile of laundry. “You’re up! How are you feeling?” He moved anxiously toward the table but then stopped when he noticed he was tracking snow across the floor. “Oh! Sorry, Mrs. K.”
“Here, you sit there, Ed.” Mrs. Kerwyn nodded at one of the kitchen chairs and went to grab the braided rug by the door.
“Put this under your feet,” she said, bending in front of him.
Ed obediently lifted his feet, and Mrs. Kerwyn shoved it under.
“There we are. That’ll do. You want something to eat? ”
“No, I’m okay. Thanks, Mrs. K.”
“Well, at least have a biscuit.” Mrs. Kerwyn went to fetch one from the stone canister on the counter.
Edmund looked approvingly across the table. “You look better, Possum. Stronger. Are you?”
Kate smiled, her anger at Louisa dissipating.
Edmund always had that effect on her—making her feel calm.
He was the brother she wished she had instead of the brutish Ray.
Edmund, an only child from the farm next to theirs, had grown up with the Kerwyns, and they had whiled away many a summer day romping through the woods and fields outside of Merriweather proper.
It was Edmund, of course, who had come to her aid when she ran off to live in a badger hole on Christmas Tree Hill when she could no longer stand Ray’s relentless harassment.
Edmund had helped to make the dwelling not only habitable, but rather cozy, though he had betrayed her slightly by finally informing the Kerwyns as to where she had disappeared.
When she heard where her daughter was, Mrs. Kerwyn herself had several times made her way to the badger hole to plead with Kate to come home, but to no avail.
Kate stubbornly refused to leave, having found that independence suited her quite well, thank you very much.
She liked living on her own and probably would have remained thus had she not become desperately ill.
After finding her unconscious, Edmund had, for the second time, rescued her and carried her home.
“I do feel better, yes.” Kate threw a sock at him.
His face immediately broke into a crooked smile, and he threw it back. “Good. I’ve been missing your caraway bread. When you gonna make some? You’re weeks behind, you know,” he teased.
“That all I’m good for? Making bread for you?”
He shrugged and shot her a tiny wink, though his eyes looked fatigued, Kate noticed.
He practically lived at the Kerwyns these days, helping her father to get the harvest in after Ray, fed up with what he called his father’s “relentless slavery,” had secured a job in town at the feed mill and taken up residence at Ruby’s Boarding House.
After stubbornly waiting days for Ray to change his mind and come back, Mr. Kerwyn had been obliged to telephone Edmund and ask if he would come over and help, which he did, despite the fact that he had a widowed mother and his own small farm that needed caring.
“Do you remember anything, Edmund?” Mrs. Kerwyn asked, setting a small plate with two biscuits and a steaming cup of coffee in front of him. “About the day the three of you found Kate?”
“Thanks, Mrs. K,” he said, eagerly picking up one of the biscuits.
He took a bite and leaned back. “Not much.” After pausing to think, he looked at Kate.
“I remember you had long black hair, all tangled. Cutest little button nose. No shoes. You were crying. Kept asking for ‘Mama.’ ” He reached for the coffee.
“Me and May took turns carrying you.” He blew on the steaming mug.
“I was probably only about seven, though, so May did most of the carryin’. Why?”
“Because she’s obsessed,” Louisa said disdainfully from the other end of the kitchen. “She’s always been an attention-seeker, Ed, you know that. I wouldn’t put it past her to have gotten sick at Christmas on purpose.”