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I ran forward and threw myself down, reaching for my mother. I pulled her against me. Her ribs were sharp against my fingers.
“I’m so sorry,” I cried. “I am so sorry.” The tears I’d held inside spilled hot down my cheeks, wetting her tangled hair.
“Hannah,” Conn said, and I felt his thin arms wrap around my waist. “You came home. I missed you so much.”
I held all that was left of my family and cried.
When there were no tears left to shed, I stood up and wiped my cheeks. It was time to take care of my mother and brother. We needed light. Warmth. Food. I felt around the edges of the dark cabin, my fingers scraping the empty shelves and the bare table.
“Do we have no candle?” I asked.
Conn, who had followed me, knotted his hands together. “I ate it,” he whispered.
How could a broken heart break yet again? I took his face in my hands and I kissed him on each cold cheek. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll get another one.”
My mother was still wrapped in blankets. “I can’t seem to—” Her voice faded as she waved a hand around the frigid room. She sighed heavily. “Can’t seem to manage it …”
“Conn,” I said, “go ask Zenna for some kindling, and a candle if she has one she can spare.”
I opened the shutters. The wind came in, but so did a littlelight. My mother blinked silently in the corner, her hands picking fitfully at the blankets.
Oh, Mother, what have I done to you?
I found an old linen rag and started ripping it into pieces to help start the fire.
“Hannah, Hannah, here, look what I have!”
Conn was already back, bearing a sack full of sticks, two candles, and a loaf of hard black bread. God bless Zenna. I would never speak ill of her again. If anyone called her crazy, I’d tell them how she’d saved us.
As quickly as I could, I made a little fire. I’d save the candles for when darkness fell.
I cut the loaf into five pieces, one for me and two each for my mother and my brother. “Come,” I said to my mother, “it’s time to eat. Time to get warm.”
She finally rose from the bed, and as she approached the light of the growing fire, I could see how much she had changed in only a matter of days. The skin on her cheeks sagged, and her eyes were sunk deep under her brows. She looked ten years older.
She looked like she was dying.
And I knew it was my fault.
I took her hand. “I’m going to take care of you,” I said.
“I love you, Hannah,” she said quietly, removing her hand from mine and sinking down onto the bench. “I love you more than my life, and I always will. But I will not forgive you.”
CHAPTER 57
My name is Hannah Dory, and I have never been good enough.
Not faithful enough, or meek enough.
I have made horrible mistakes. Fatal ones.
Frozen grasses crunched beneath my feet as I walked along the edge of the forest. The sun was barely up, and mist rolled toward me over the barren fields.
I don’t deserve it, but I ask for Your help anyway. Not for me, but for what’s left of my family.
My fingers were blue with cold and clouds of my breath floated in the air before me. But I’d found a tiny clutch of waxcap mushrooms a ways back, and this had given me hope.
I’d gathered enough sticks and deadfall to last a few days—the trees weren’t ours to cut down, even if I’d had an axe or the strength—and I’d taught Conn how to mind the fire, to keep it burning when our mother lost herself in sadness.
