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Tears of grief and relief. The doctor looked at me from under scruffy brows before he turned his attention back to Ollie.
    “Hush now, child.” He knelt down. Her head moved to his shoulder, her arms stealing around his neck. “Miss Ada isn’t sick anymore. Ye didn’t want her to be sick, remember?” His r’s rolled slightly, hinting of a homeland beyond American shores.
    Ollie shook her head as he lifted her. I hushed a whimpering Janie. His gaze moved past me, to the doorway. I whipped around. James and Dan stood naked and unashamed, their eyes big in bloodless faces.
    My cheeks warmed. “Clothes on, boys.” I shooed them from the room, blocking the doorway with my body. They ran up the stairs. I bit my lip and turned back to the old man.
    He returned Ollie to the floor. “If ye’ll see to the little ones,” he said to her, “we’ll tend to things here.”
    She nodded and took Janie from me. I stepped aside. After one long look at the still figure on the bed, Ollie retreated to the chaos upstairs.
    The man nodded at me after Ollie disappeared. “Sheriff told me ye’d come.”
    “Yes, but not soon enough.” I glanced at Aunt Adabelle’s waxen face, a face that resembled the doll Daddy bought me for my tenth birthday.
    “T’wasn’t much to be done. The Spanish flu hits hard and quick. But at least ye can care for the children.”
    “The children.” I felt my whole face crinkle with a frown. “I understand this is their daddy’s farm?”
    He lifted one of Aunt Adabelle’s cold hands, laid it gently across her chest. “Frank Gresham. His wife, Clara, didn’t make it through her last birthing.”
    “Janie.” My whisper faded amidst the thumping overhead.
    “Frank’d already been shipped to France. Adabelle moved in. She’s been helping out around here since they were babes, all three. Took to them as her family, seeing as she had no one else.”
    My face crumpled with sadness instead of confusion. My aunt had no one else because Mama refused to speak to her. How could Mama have let it come to this?
    The thumping from upstairs calmed a bit, the quiet silencing my questions.
    “Ye’ll want to dress her, I think.” The doctor’s words broke through my musings and stole all moisture from my mouth. Did he think I knew how to do what he asked of me? Weren’t there women in this town—Aunt Adabelle’s friends—who would be better suited to such tasks?
    He walked from the room. I followed, shutting the door behind me. “Ye won’t have time for laying her out. We need to get her buried. Likely there’ll be few who can leave their own to attend.”
    I didn’t know which disturbed me more: his reading my mind or his intimation that Aunt Adabelle wasn’t the only fatality. I knew influenza could take the old and the young and the ones already sick with other ailments, but my aunt didn’t fit those descriptions.
    “Will someone come for her?” croaked from my throat.
    The doctor scratched behind his ear, agitating a tuft of hair that afterward refused to lie flat again. “Tomorrow morning. Early. Can ye have everyone ready?”
    “Yes.” But could I really ready a woman for burial? Then a more terrible thought struck. Could I prepare these children to witness it?
    “I guess the children have to be there.” I ventured the words past my fear, hoping for a tiny reprieve.
    He answered in a grunt I interpreted as agreement. “No one else to care for them. Everyone around here has their own to tend.” Did I read fear in his face, too?
    My fingers curled around one another as I gathered my courage. “We’ll be ready.”
    His eyes turned stern before he spoke again. “And there’s to be no church or school until ye hear further. Don’t want this spreading any more than it has.”
    His words sank deep and heavy, like a boulder dropped in a pond. He opened the back door to leave.
    “Wait.” I followed him out onto the porch, the boys’ wet clothes tangling my feet. “Will you please send