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grays on white. She thought there were three colors of blooms, blue, violet, and rose. She tried to guess by the depth of gray, which flower was which color.
    Even as she heard the deep breathing of the two beside her, she made herself focus on the paper as one tear after another dripped off her cheeks onto the downy pillow. In the silence, she heard a door open and close. She couldn’t hear the footsteps, they were so soft.
    For one wild minute, she imagined another tap on the door. Bit her lower lip to keep from calling out come in. But the image of the handsome man slipping into the room and into her arms for comfort would not disappear. Claire eased out of the warm bed onto the cold floor. Kneeling, she raised her hands together and bowed her head, but she heard another door open down at the other end of the hall.
    Bella had slipped in to talk to her parents. Claire turned her beads and breathed her prayers.

CHAPTER SIX
     
    The next morning they were ready to leave with the first light. They started with a cold breakfast of hard tack and goat cheese and were each glad to leave for their own reasons.
    Claire was tired at the beginning, but soon they were finally past the islands and onto the mainland of New York State on the long road west. The next planned stop was in Columbus, Ohio, where Bonnie hoped to catch up with her brothers. Young boys, too young for war, Ian and Shawn, were in basic training for the western war.
    Once again on the highway outside of the large town, they stopped while Bonnie rummaged through the food-stuffs to provide another cold meal. The ladies all headed as usual together toward the tree line.
    Now wide awake, Claire noticed that all the joy that had lit up Bella’s face the last couple of days was gone. She remembered every word she had overheard last night. Although she had tried to defend Henry in her mind, there was much that the woman had told him that she felt was right.
     
    Instinctively she reached out to take the hands of the little boy, while his mother relieved herself. “Your Mother looked so captured by your son last night.” She didn’t add, before the screaming match that followed.
    Bella stood and swung the little boy up into her arms to carry out of the trees before setting him down again to walk back to the wagon. “She told me last night that she was sorry. When the doctor’s diagnosed his condition as deteriorating and hopeless, she thought she was doing the right thing in sending him to the asylum.”
    Bonnie asked the hard questions, “You didn’t object?”
    Bella’s face darkened. Mother Wimberley moved closer to put a supporting arm around the woman. Claire expected Bella to start crying, she looked so hurt. Bella surprised them all when she raised her face and answered. “I was upset at the time. I had been told my son was going to die, there was no cure. In months, my beautiful baby would be twisted by pain and his little muscles would start to weaken,” her voice cracked.
    Claire stared at the sharp, bitter lines of the woman’s face, realizing again that Bella was not old. Like Bonnie, she had suffered too much. Bonnie stood behind her, waiting. Claire took another step closer as well. But Bella’s face went from sad to angry again.
    “Then my first husband abandoned me. He didn’t want to be burdened by either of us anymore. I was so despondent, when I was myself again, my parents had already placed Bernard in hospital. They told me it was so he would have the best of care. I felt so helpless. I believed there was nothing I could do to care for him.”
    She stared behind her, tears standing in her eyes for real. “Bonnie, I owe you so much.”
    The tall woman wrapped the small one in a big hug and Barney gave a squeal of alarm at being crushed between them. Laughing, calming the little boy, they separated.
    Father Wimberley called to the clutch of women, all surrounding the mother and child. “Everything all right? We need to get going.”
    All