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the night, protected me from the wolves. And then carried me into town and beyond it, just to see that I was safely delivered to my destination.
    Pulling my shoulders back, I marched toward my aunt. Carefully, I measured my voice, asking instead of demanding, "Why would you drive him off like that, without even a cup of tea? He did nothing but see me to your door."
    Birdie cracked the shotgun open again, dumping the shells in her hand. "It's for your own good, Zora. Nobody here knows what happened in Baltimore, and we'll keep it that way. But you can't go running around with Birch."
    A protest flew to my lips-—I had hardly intended to go running around with anyone, but to be forbidden without explanation? "Why can't I?"
    "He stole that land he's living on," Birdie told me, clear green eyes narrowing. The expression marred her dollish features. "He's as bad as those Dalton Gang boys, and I don't want him around."
    My skin tingled—not quite numbness, almost a sort of fire. Emerson hardly struck me as a thief or a murderer, and certainly as nothing less than a gentleman, however rough his manner. And I raged inwardly that a single, calculated kiss had so lowered my aunt's opinion of me, sight unseen.
    "But he—"
    Already frustrated, Birdie dropped the shotgun shells into her apron pocket and directed me toward the soddy. "It's for your own good." Then, as if realizing we were strangers and hardly introduced, she turned to catch my face between her hands. The hardness in her eyes faded. "You look just like your mother."
    "Do I?" I asked automatically.
    Stroking a rough thumb against my cheek, Birdie seemed caught in memories for a moment—pleasant ones, at least, for the corner of her mouth turned up in a wry smile. "Very much so. Come inside. We'll have some tea before we start the laundry."
    She nudged me toward the door, then raised her voice to call, "Louella! Louella Lou, come home! Come meet your cousin Zora!"
    Ducking inside the soddy, I tried not to be surprised. Earth floor and earthen walls made for a cool but dark little house. What should have been windows were holes with oilpaper tacked over them. They let in just enough light for me to realize that my aunt had a very spare life indeed.
    I put myself to work building a fire in the squat iron stove. She had hard, golden sticks in the wood box. Examining them closely, I realized they were bundles of straw, braided and folded.
    In Baltimore, we would have boiled the water for the washing in the kitchen, but there was hardly room for that in the soddy. I decided there must be a fire pit outside somewhere, which meant stoking that as well.
    This simple plan thrummed through me, and I was unnerved that the prospect of chores gave me pleasure. But something hard, to work the muscles and settle the mind, sounded delicious.
    It would scrub away my leftover, unseemly thoughts about Emerson—whose company I shouldn't have been so distressed to be denied. I stood on this land, in this country, to be my aunt's helpmeet and to do honor to the life I would have had, if Thomas were still at my side.
    A wistful pang went through me. I wondered what Thomas would have thought about a soddy. If he would have greeted this as an adventure or a hardship. But then, we'd planned to settle in Annapolis, hadn't we? A city well established—plenty of brick and wood to make a strong house there.
    Brushing those thoughts away, I focused on the fire. The straw logs burned much the way wood did. I watched them all the same, for the novelty of it, I suppose. Settling into this place, thick walled and cool except by the stove, I marveled that I could hear little from the outside.
    I felt just as safe in these walls as I had within the more familiar sort of Emerson's cabin. And when I took a deep breath, I smelled spring water all around, running pure beneath the parched earth. I had a feeling that my aunt's well was dug deep and true, and that comforted me.
    There was no good reckoning why I