Page 123 of Eleanor’s Earrings

Grace tied off the thread. “Because Anna still loves it.”

Eleanor sat beside her.

Grace was eighteen, only a year older than Lucy, but the sisters often treated them as a pair—the two youngest, the girls who carried water, minded children, and were sent away from danger.

Eleanor wondered how often that had made Grace invisible.

“You handled the children well during the fire,” Eleanor said.

Grace looked surprised. “I only took Lucy to the creek.”

“You kept four other children with you when their mothers went to the wagons.”

“They were frightened.”

“So were you.”

Grace smoothed the doll’s dress. “Being frightened does not mean you cannot do something.”

Eleanor smiled. “No. It does not.”

Anna ran over and hugged the doll when Grace returned it.

“It is prettier!” the child declared.

Grace laughed.

A young mother nearby asked whether Grace might help teach her daughter to sew once they were on the trail again.

Grace glanced automatically toward Eleanor.

Eleanor deliberately said nothing.

After a moment, Grace answered for herself. “Yes. I would like that.”

Something small and important shifted.

Later, Eleanor told Caroline what had happened.

Caroline smiled. “You managed not to answer for her?”

“It was difficult.”

“Did you become faint?”

“Nearly.”

“Should I fetch Martha?”

Eleanor elbowed her.

Across camp, Grace sat with two girls and a scrap of cloth, patient and absorbed.

Eleanor had spent so long thinking of Grace as someone to protect that she had almost missed the woman quietly becoming herself.

The rain-bound camp gave Eleanor and Nathaniel too much opportunity to sit near one another.

The sisters noticed. Of course they noticed.