Will shook his head. He thought his little brother deserved more. He turned to Cal and said, “If you ever decide to leave home, tell your parents first. Don’t do what I did—I was wrong not to tell Mama.”

But though he knew he’d been wrong to leave, Will still felt stifled by Mama’s attention.

A few days after the conversation with Cal, Maria found Will in the carriage house. “Mama wants you inside,” she told him.

“Why?” Will said. “So she can pat my head again? Kiss my cheek? I don’t need her hanging over me.”

“She missed you, Will.” Maria sat on an upturned bucket and smoothed her skirts down.

Will wished he could stay in the carriage house with Maria forever. He sighed. “I know Mama loves me, but I’m not a little boy anymore.”

“Maybe that’s what she’s afraid of,” Maria said. “That you’ll leave again. Are you going to leave?” Her voice trembled.

Will turned to her, ignoring Shanty nosing at his pocket. “Would you miss me, Maria?” He would miss her—Maria’s calm and gentleness drew him more than Mama’s brooding.

“Of course, I would,” she said. But she sounded perfunctory. Will couldn’t tell if Maria yearned for his companionship the way he yearned for hers.

When William and Maria returned to the house, Jenny gave them a swift glance. She’d wondered aloud where Will was, and Maria offered to find him. But Jenny fretted when the two of them spent time alone together. Maria had been so distressed after William kissed her in April. Mac and Jenny had discussed it, but neither of them knew where Will’s infatuation might lead.

“She’s his sister,” Mac insisted.

Jenny shook her head. “But she isn’t. And they both know it.”

“They were raised as siblings.”

“Perhaps so,” Jenny said. “But it wouldn’t be wrong for them to find love with each other.”

Mac harrumphed, clearly not convinced. “They’re too young.”

Jenny agreed with him on that point. She wondered whether they should send Maria to live with Abigail Duniway to nip any developing relationship between the two teenagers.

Jenny sent Maria off to braid the little girls’ hair and asked William to help her peel apples for a pie. They sat in the kitchen paring the fruit over a bucket between them. “Are you happy here?” she asked him.

William glanced up with a wild look in his eyes. He shrugged.

“Tell me the truth,” she said. “I want to help you.”

“I don’t know, Mama,” he said, his voice sounding strained. “I want to be here, but I don’t.”

“What’s the reason you don’t want to be here?”

“There’s nothing for me to do.” He waved the paring knife in one hand and a half-peeled apple in the other. “I don’t need the academy anymore. You don’t need me at home. Mac doesn’t have much for me in town.”

Jenny swallowed hard when William used Mac’s name. He hadn’t called Mac “Pa” since he’d found out about Johnson and the others. She pressed her lips together so as not to comment.

William continued, “I didn’t like the militia, but at least it had a purpose.”

“What purpose do you want?” she asked her son.

“I don’t know.” And he turned back to peeling the apple.

The next day, Will rode Shanty to Daniel’s farm to see Jonah. After living together for months, they had spent little time together since their return.

Jonah was cleaning the barn with Daniel and some of Daniel’s children. It was a messy job and not very interesting, but Will pitched in. Afterward, they went into the house for cider and cornbread. Esther served them but seemed angry with Will.

“The rapscallion returns,” she said as she plunked his plate in front of him and gestured at the honey. “Help yourself.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Abercrombie,” he muttered.

She sat next to him and leaned her elbows on the table. “Just what did you think, taking Jonah off to Jacksonville?”

“Esther,” Jonah said, “I told you. ’Tweren’t Will’s fault.”

Esther continued to glare at Will, who shrugged and ate, washing the bread down with a gulp of cider.

When they finished, Jonah gestured to Will, and they returned to the barn. “I don’t know what bee Esther has in her bonnet,” Jonah said. “She’s convinced you made me go south. I told her otherwise.”

“It doesn’t matter, I suppose.” Will sighed. “How are you doing, now we’re home?”

Jonah chewed on a piece of straw. “Fine, I guess. Daniel says he’ll deed that land to me next spring. If I prove myself this winter while we clear a field to build on. We’ll build a cabin, so I can marry Iris next summer, once I’m eighteen.”

“And is Iris willing?” Will said with a grin.

“I ain’t asked her proper,” Jonah said. “I want the land deed first. But I’ll bet she’ll say yes. She kisses me like she will.”

Will grinned to himself. So now Jonah had kissed Iris. With a pang, he thought of Maria. He hadn’t tried to kiss her again. Maybe he never would. But he wanted to every time he saw her.

As Will rode home, he thought about how settled Jonah seemed. He’d given up on his dream of prospecting and returned to the life Daniel and Esther offered him. A small bit of land to farm until he could file his own homestead claim. A wife soon, and babies after that, most likely. Meanwhile, Will drifted aimlessly.

Mac spent every hour he could in his office, catching up after his weeks-long absence retrieving Will. His business endeavors all needed his attention. The banking proposal seemed dead in the water, because Mac’s brother Owen wouldn’t respond to his missives about a partnership with Ladd’s bank. The steamship company was embroiled in a fare war. The road survey would not resume until next summer. His Oregon investments were not reaping any profits—it was a good thing the California properties were thriving. Construction of the transcontinental railroad east from San Francisco kept workers in California prospering.

On November 8, Mac took a break from his paperwork and voted in the federal election. He cast his ballot for Abraham Lincoln, of course. He hoped the President would be reelected and the War would end soon. Union forces were making headway through the South—the papers were full of Sherman’s march through Georgia toward the Atlantic.

Will stopped by his office that afternoon. “Did you vote?” he asked Mac.

“Certainly.”

“Any word on the local results?”

“Not yet,” Mac leaned back in his chair and gestured for the boy to have a seat. “Polls aren’t even closed yet. It’ll be at least tomorrow before we know how Oregon voted. Getting the national count will take time.”