Jenny set the letter on a table and shook her head. “Let’s talk. I can read it later.”

Esther plopped on the divan after taking a muffin. “I don’t know how I’ll bear two more months of this,” she said, with a sigh and a wave at her belly. “Each time I’m carryin’ seems harder.”

“It must be because we’re busier,” Jenny said. “More children, more household to care for.”

“And, of course, we’re gettin’ older.” Esther grinned, then stared at Jenny sharply and whispered, “Are you carryin’, too?”

Jenny glanced across the room at Will and Jonah. Could they hear the women’s conversation? She still hadn’t talked to Mac. She nodded and murmured, “But I haven’t told anyone yet. It’s too soon.”

Esther beamed. “More of our young’uns to be friends.” She tilted her head, gesturing toward the boys. “Like those two.” As usual, Esther lumped Jonah, her youngest brother, in with her children.

“Yes,” Jenny said. “Will and Jonah have been the best of friends.”

Tired after tilling the fields all morning, Will was glad for the chance to sit in the parlor with Jonah and eat muffins with none of the younger children there to pester them. Mama and Esther Abercrombie talked and nodded across the room, but he couldn’t hear their conversation. He was only half-listening to Jonah, until Jonah asked, “Who are you sweet on?”

“Huh?” Will said. He wasn’t sweet on anyone.

“I’m gonna ask Iris Hayes to the next dance. Who you gonna ask?” Jonah took another muffin from the plate between them.

“Hadn’t thought about it.”

“I danced with Iris at the last harvest ball. I aim to ask her to be my wife by year-end.” Jonah bit into the muffin.

“Did you ever kiss her?” Will asked, remembering his dare.

“Not yet. But if I want to be a farmer, I’ll need a wife.”

“You think you’re ready to be a husband?” Will choked out. “I ain’t.” Mama didn’t like him saying ‘ain’t,’ but she wasn’t paying him any mind now.

“It won’t be long. When I have a cabin ready, I’m set on Iris. What about Cordelia?”

“What?” It took Will a moment to follow Jonah’s shift from Iris to matchmaking for Will. “Your sister?” He’d never thought of marrying the oldest Abercrombie girl, though she was close to him in age.

“Then you and I’d be brothers almost.” Jonah seemed to have both their lives all figured out.

“Cordelia’s n-n-nice enough, but—” Will stammered.

“Or Meg Bingham, if you don’t want Cordelia,” Jonah said, taking another muffin. “Meg’s been sweet on you since you was young’uns. Because you both have pockmarks.”

Will’s fingers went automatically to his cheek. Meg hung after him anytime their families met. Her pockmarks were much worse than Will’s. He had three on his face, and a few others on his stomach. Meg’s face was covered—she’d suffered in the same smallpox epidemic as Will and nearly died. But that didn’t mean he should wed her. “I don’t want to marry her either.”

“Then who?” Jonah demanded.

Maria’s face flashed into Will’s mind—her smile when he’d given her the carving of Shanty, another smile as she’d run toward the Abercrombies’ house that morning. But he couldn’t marry her either. She might be his sister, no matter what Pa claimed. He wasn’t ready to marry anyone. “No need to decide now,” he told Jonah.

It was late afternoon before Jenny had time to open the letter from her mother. She broke the seal and read:

January 30, 1864

Ma chère Geneviève,

I appreciated your Christmas wishes and should have responded to thank you sooner. But the winter weather and the War have had me in vapors. The news is not good from Louisiana. The Yankees have ejected my brother from his home there and dispersed his slaves.

Here in Missouri, the news is little better. The Yankees hold the state, though our neighbors are mostly of a common sentiment with us.

The Confederacy will rally, I am sure. I pray daily for the South to rise and smite the enemy from our land.

I do hope the vile War ends soon. Otherwise, I fear my son Jacques will be off to soldier. Thankfully, my dear Mr. Peterson is too old and suffers dreadfully from the gout, so he will not be called into service.

And what of the news in Oregon? It troubles me you are so far away, depriving me of the comfort of my daughter’s companionship during these evil days.

Mr. Peterson and your brother send their greetings. Write me again when you can spare a moment,

Ta chère mère,

Hortense Peterson

Jenny shuddered as she set the letter on the table next to her. The mention of her stepfather never failed to rouse terrible memories. She would like to meet her half-brother Jacques, born just months after she fled Missouri with Mac. But if it meant also seeing her mother’s second husband, then she would stay in Oregon.

Several years ago, Mac had offered to take her back to Missouri to see her mother. “You haven’t returned to Boston to see your family,” she replied. “Why should I visit my mother?”

“I’m willing,” he said, kissing her cheek. “It’s whatever you want, my love.” He ignored her suggestion that he visit Boston.

Jenny wondered whether the children missed knowing their grandparents and other relatives. Though her mother and Mac’s parents were not the loving elders of fairy tales. Neither she nor Mac had grown up with parents given to affection.

Except for Papa, she remembered. She’d loved her father without reserve, but he had succumbed to fever in Missouri when she was thirteen. She smiled, thinking of how much Will reminded her of her father. The same light hair and slender frame, the same love of books and pensive demeanor.

As Mama read the letter from her mother to the family over supper, Will wondered about his half-uncle in Missouri. That boy wasn’t much older than he was, just like Jonah wasn’t much older than his niece Cordelia. And Jonah had a younger half-brother, the son of his father and stepmother, who’d left Oregon with his mother when he was a toddler and hadn’t been seen since.

Families were strange things, Will thought. Relationships braided together until no one could pick them apart. Maria was part of their family. Jonah was part of Esther’s. Each person somehow became part of the whole. But how many braids could a family take before it got tied up in knots?

Will shook his head. This notion of braids and knots—no one else in the family seemed to have strange ideas like his. Why did he?

Then he thought about his grandmother’s fear that the Army would conscript her son. Was the Army so desperate they needed sixteen-year-olds? How would Will feel if he were called up? The thought of men shooting at him made his insides churn.

What was worth fighting for? Was there anything he believed in firmly enough to die for? If there was, he couldn’t name it.

“Will.” Pa’s voice broke into Will’s reverie.