Page 10 of The Frozen River

“Be careful with him,” I say, unbuckling my medical bag from the saddle. “He is in rare form today.”

“No matter. He likes me.” He shrugs, confident he will come to no harm, then flashes a smile that reveals he has lost his final baby tooth.

“Still”—I bend to kiss the top of his head, then gently nip the side of one ear—“he bites.”

Young Ephraim giggles, and I ruffle his shaggy hair as he turns toward the barn to care for my horse.

It is hard to have an oldest child, but harder still to have a youngest. Soon he too will have a beard like Cyrus and an Adam’s apple like Jonathan. Soon he will spend half his nights away, and that will be the end of childhood in our home. I am fifty-four years old, and that boy is my last. This knowledge is both a relief and a sadness—I have brought nine children into this world, after all, and only six are still living. Like all mothers, I have long since mastered the art of nursing joy at one breast and grief at the other.

I stand at the door watching his loping, childish gait a moment longer, then I go into the house to check on Sam Dawin.

“How is our patient?” I ask my daughters as soon as I’m through the door. Warm air and the scent of freshly baked bread rush toward me, vanquishing the chill I’ve felt since leaving home in the middle of the night.

“How did you know about him?” Dolly looks up, and I can see curiosity burning in her eyes. They are the same bright blue as her father’s.

“Word travels fast.”

At twenty and seventeen Hannah and Dolly are women, not girls—all hips and curves—racing toward their own lives and away from home. It won’t be long before they outgrow me, before they outgrow their willingness to be only daughters and sisters. Soon the inevitable will happen: they’ll want to be someone’s wife. Someone’s mother.

“Well?” I ask. “How is he?”

“Awake—” Dolly says.

“And hungry,” Hannah adds.

“And eager to go home. But we made him stay.”

Sam Dawin is not a small man, nor does he seem the type to take instructions from anyone, much less young women half his size. Curious, I lift an eyebrow.

Hannah stands by the fire, running flax fibers through thumb and forefinger and onto a drop spindle that swings gently near her feet. The heavy spindle twists the fibers into a line of newly formed linen thread that, when long enough, she wraps around the bobbin at its base. Given the eight spools of thread that sit neatly on the hearth, it’s clear she has been at this work all morning. A smile bobbles on her lips. Unlike her younger sister, Hannah has my eyes—wild and brown, like a dust storm. No wonder Moses Pollard has fallen under her spell.

“I hid his britches,” she explains.

In addition to having acquired the exact tone and tenor of my voice, the girls have also learned a way of speaking in which they not only finish each other’s sentences but, apparently, their thoughts as well. They begin another rapid-fire exchange, and I glance between them, trying to keep up.

Dolly stands at the kitchen table, dressing a roast for dinner. Her dark, curly hair is tied back, her hands deft. “He was furious.”

“Wouldn’t let us in the room.”

“But then he fell asleep.”

Hannah also acquired my curls, but hers are flaxen instead, pulled into a braid that hangs over her shoulder. “He’s been out for two hours.”

“Shattered with exhaustion.” Dolly ties off the cut of beef with a piece of string.

“Too much excitement.”

Laughing, I slide out of cloak and gloves, then lower my voice. “Where did you put his clothes?”

Hannah nods toward my workroom and mouths “cedar chest.”

From the time they were born, the girls have been surrounded by men. Father. Brothers. Countless patients. And while I have never specifically trained them to deal with the more obstinate sex—the way I have trained them to stitch wounds and spin flax and cook for a small army—I am gratified to see that they are already well versed in the fine art of managing recalcitrant patients.

“What time did Jonathan bring him?”

The girls look at each other, silently calculate the time.

“Close to three—” Hannah says.