Chapter 107
She’d rarely seen her father cry. Even at her mother’s funeral, Walter had organized the service, spoken the eulogy, and held his grandchildren while Rachel stood apart, numb and unable to stay fully present.
His breathing shook against her, unfamiliar and raw, and Rachel held him harder.
Caleb began talking over both of them, his voice rising with weeks of saved-up stories.
“The caravan got attacked, and people came with crossbows. Grandpa pulled me under a wagon. Hannah bandaged my hand with her sleeve because the first bandage came off. Then Harlan’s people rode up on horseback and shot the raiders.
They had a wagon with medical supplies, and they put Grandpa on it because his hands were too swollen for him to walk far.
They brought us here. Our house is still standing in Brenton.
Did you know that? Someone told us it didn’t burn,” Caleb said.
“Caleb, she knows about the house. She’s been there,” Walter said.
“Did she find my drawings? I left them on the kitchen table.”
“Let her breathe, son.”
Rachel let Caleb talk. His voice filled the space between them and gave her a kind of proof no ledger or stranger’s account could match.
He was here. He was alive enough to worry about the drawings she’d packed in Brenton and carried for weeks without telling him.
Walter eased back. His hands stayed on her shoulders, and she felt the careful pressure of fingers that couldn’t grip the way they once had.
He studied her face, noticing the damage the road and illness had left behind.
“You’re thinner,” Walter said.
“So are you,” Rachel said.
“You’re favoring your side.”
“It got infected, but it’s healed enough.”
Walter turned one of Rachel’s hands palm up.
The calluses were new, layered over older ones from county work.
Road dirt had settled into the creases beside her knuckles, and one scrubbing wouldn’t clear it.
A scar crossed the back of her left hand where she’d caught it on something sharp beside a creek east of Millerton.
“How did you survive?” Walter asked.
Rachel almost laughed. The question held five weeks of road, infection, fever, a wound that had nearly killed her, strangers’ kindness, Sophie’s stubborn presence, and decisions she still wasn’t sure were right.
“That answer is too long for the middle of a work lane,” Rachel said.
Then she noticed. The joy that had been expanding inside her since Caleb ran into her arms tightened around a sudden absence.
Her eyes moved past Walter and Caleb, then across the packed earth lane where people walked between barracks and workshops at the pace of assigned labor. Hannah wasn’t there.
“Where’s Hannah?” Rachel asked.
The question came out sharper than Rachel meant it to. Fear turned measured words into demands before she could stop them. Walter looked toward the housing area beyond the nearest row of barracks. His face showed no alarm, but that didn’t calm her.
“She was helping with a meal crew when someone went to get her. The eastern kitchen is near the water points, and it’s not far. She’s fine, Rachel. She’s tired like the rest of us, but she’s fine,” Walter said.
Rachel searched the approaching people anyway.
Her attention moved across each figure with the same intensity she’d used in road camps and weigh stations for five weeks.
A woman carried laundry. Two men led a work crew toward the fields.
A child followed an adult with an armload of kindling.
At the far end of the path, thirty yards from Rachel, a teenage girl stopped.
Hannah was thinner than the daughter Rachel had left in the doorway of their Brenton home the morning the department called with another placement emergency.
Her dark hair had been cut shorter for practicality, and it fell across her forehead in a way that made her look older than sixteen.
She wore a wool sweater too large for her frame and canvas pants cinched at the waist with rope.
Her old, slouched defiance was gone. She stood straight with her shoulders back, balanced on both feet as if the weeks without Rachel had taught her a different way to hold herself.
Neither of them moved. Hannah stood at the end of the path with her arms at her sides, too far away for Rachel to read her face.
Rachel stayed where Walter had left her, aware of Caleb quiet beside her and the settlement continuing around them.
The space between Rachel and Hannah held the weeks Rachel had missed, the attack on the caravan, the blood on the wagon wood, and the morning in Brenton when Rachel left for someone else’s emergency, believing her own children would still be safe when she returned.
Rachel wanted to run to her. Hannah moved first. She crossed the path in fast strides that turned into a run before she reached the halfway point.
Then she hit Rachel’s arms with enough force that Rachel stepped back to keep them both standing.
Hannah cried against her. The sound came from somewhere deep and shook through them both. Her grip was fierce, nothing like the angry girl who’d stood in the doorway five weeks ago. It was the girl who’d pulled Caleb behind an overturned wagon while crossbow bolts struck the wood around them.
She’d bandaged his hand with her sleeve when the first bandage came loose.
She’d walked beside a wagon until someone called her up to ride.
Rachel held her without speaking. Too many words crowded the space between them.
None mattered as much as Hannah alive, whole, and trembling in her arms after weeks Rachel hadn’t been there to see.