Chapter 56
“Don’t move. Just sit,” Sophie said.
Rachel tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t obey.
The fever had taken her strength and her balance.
Mud held her boots in place. She pushed against the ground with her palms and managed to sit upright, but standing was more than her body could manage.
Sophie took the map from Rachel’s back pocket without asking and unfolded it on the wet road beside them.
She pinned the corners with stones so the wind wouldn’t take it.
Her eyes moved over the creased paper with a focus Rachel hadn’t seen there before.
“There’s a building,” Sophie said.
A faded roadside sign stood twenty yards ahead, and Rachel realized she’d missed it completely. The worn letters pointed toward the county grange hall, less than a mile away.
“You’re done deciding today,” Sophie said.
There was no anger in Sophie’s voice. It was a plain decision made by a thirteen-year-old girl standing in the rain beside a woman who couldn’t get to her feet.
Rachel wanted to argue. The habit ran deep, shaped by fourteen years of being the person who decided what came next.
Sophie shouldered her own pack, then lifted Rachel’s with both hands.
The weight dragged at her thin frame, and she staggered before finding her balance.
She got one strap across her right shoulder and left the other dangling.
Then she turned toward the grange hall and took the first step without waiting for Rachel to tell her what to do.
Getting to the grange hall took nearly two hours, and Rachel remembered it in broken pieces.
Sophie carried one pack twenty yards at a time, hid it beneath wet brush, then came back for her.
Each time, she gripped Rachel’s arm above the elbow with small, determined hands.
“Lean on me. Not all your weight. Just enough,” Sophie said.
Rachel tried. Her legs answered slowly, and the road tilted beneath her boots.
The trees seemed to sway even when the air was still.
Sophie kept her upright through stubborn effort.
Whenever Rachel’s balance failed, Sophie stopped long enough for the world to settle before pushing them forward another ten steps.
They repeated the pattern again and again.
Sophie moved the pack, hid it, returned for Rachel, walked her forward, then went back for the other one.
Each trip grew shorter as Sophie’s strength drained.
By the final stretch, she was breathing in hard, controlled pulls Rachel could hear under the rain.
The Grange Hall finally appeared at the end of a gravel drive.
It was a white clapboard building with boarded windows and a front door hanging slightly open.
Sophie propped her against the wall beside the door and went inside first. Rachel heard her move through the empty rooms, checking corners and testing the floor.
Less than a minute later, Sophie returned and helped Rachel through the doorway into a dry meeting room.
Folding tables leaned against one wall, and a wooden stage filled the far end.
“Stay here. Don’t move,” Sophie said.
Rachel sat on the floor because standing required more focus than she had left.
The room smelled musty and faintly of old paper.
Dust lay across the tabletops. An old kitchen occupied a room beyond the stage, with bare counters except for a stack of plastic cups and a ceramic mug.
Sophie moved through both spaces with purpose.
She opened cabinets, checked drawers, and studied what they could use.
The hand pump was in a small shed behind the building.
“The pump works. It takes about fifteen hard pulls before anything comes out, but it’s clean once it starts,” Sophie said.
She set up camp in a rear classroom where the windows faced away from the road.
Folding tables became drying racks for their soaked clothing.
Sophie hung Rachel’s jacket from a ceiling hook, spread their socks across a tabletop, and placed both packs against the interior wall beyond the doorway’s line of sight.
She filled every container they owned with pumped water and lined them along the baseboard.
Food came next. Sophie opened both packs and laid their remaining supplies on the floor between them.
They had dried beans, Keller preserves, shelled corn, potatoes softening at the edges, and the last of the salt.
She divided everything into small portions without asking Rachel what to do.
Rachel watched her measure each item carefully, and the silence made it clear Sophie had taken charge.
“Eat,” Sophie said.
The beans had no taste. Her throat tightened around each swallow, and chewing exhausted her more than walking had that morning.
She managed half before setting the cup aside.
Sophie didn’t argue. She ate her own portion in three bites and went back to organizing their supplies.
The fever hit hard that evening. Rachel shook so violently her jaw locked, then sweated through her shirt and the thin blanket beneath her.
Sophie cleaned the wound twice with boiled water and the last clean gauze.
She worked by memory, copying what she’d seen adults do without knowing each step.
Her hands stayed steady, though her care was uneven.
She pressed too hard in some places, missed others, and used water before it had cooled enough.
Rachel didn’t correct her. She didn’t have the strength.
“We should go back to the farm. Thomas would help. His wife knows plants. She might have something for the infection,” Rachel said during a brief, clear moment.