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sprinkled in different-size blocks, fitted together like a child’s puzzle and stitched with yellow embroidery as carefully as her father’s sutures.
    â€œMa made that when I turned eighteen,” he explained, a solid presence behind her. “Those are pieces of every shirt she ever sewed for me. Waste not, want not.”
    How could she possibly sleep under something so personal? Catherine pulled back her hand and turned. “Perhaps I should stay with my patient.”
    He took a step away from her as if to block the door. “Beth and I can handle things. You deserve your rest.” He nodded toward the bed. “She left you one of Ma’s clean nightgowns, I see. If you need anything else, just holler.”
    Yell, and have nearly a half dozen men appear to help her? Some women would have been delighted by the prospect. She could imagine her friend Maddie crying out and then sitting back with a grin to watch the fireworks. But Catherine felt as if fine threads were weaving about her like her father’s surgery silk, binding her to this place, these people.
    Was she really ready to be that close to anyone again?
    * * *
    Drew left Catherine and returned to the main cabin so he could help Beth, bringing with him the lacy doily his sister had left on his table and depositing it on her bed. He dozed for a while on one of the beds he used to share with his brothers, rousing twice to poke Levi into silence. Beth woke him before dawn and stumbled off to bed herself. Drew leaned against the hard rocks of the hearth and watched his mother.
    She was a proud woman, sure of her skills and her faith. Unlike Catherine, she’d never followed any calling but the keeping of hearth and home and the running of the family farm while his father was logging. She’d been the steadying presence behind Drew the past ten years, always ready to provide advice and comfort, a loaf of bread and a warm quilt. Sometimes he felt as if each stitch formed the word
love
.
    More than one man over the years had attempted to court her. But his mother had refused to leave her claim, even after most of her sons had land of their own. He remembered the day not long after his father had died when men had come from town to try to persuade her to move in closer.
    â€œA widowed woman with five boys and a girl?” one of them had scoffed. “You can’t manage this property alone.”
    â€œI’m not alone,” his mother had said, putting one arm around Drew and the other around Simon as their siblings gathered close. “If this is what the Lord wants for us, He’ll make a way.”
    The Lord must have wanted them at Wallin Landing, for they’d been here ever since.
    His mother was still sleeping when his brothers left for their work and Beth started about her chores of feeding the chickens, checking for eggs and letting the goats, horses and pigs out to pasture. Simon came upstairs long enough to assure Drew that everything else had been taken care of.
    â€œWe’ll have the oxen,” he murmured, glancing around Drew as if to make sure their mother was sleeping peacefully. “And I wanted to let you know that John figured the costs for the plow. We should have enough from that spar for Captain Collings to make a good down payment. Then we can put James’s field in corn and make better use of those horses he was so set on.”
    Drew nodded. James had convinced them to invest in the strong horses when another local farmer had given up his claim and needed to sell out. Drew had hoped to put the beasts to good use expanding the fields. Their family had run perilously short of corn and wheat the past two winters, and any profit they might have made logging had been eaten up by purchasing cornmeal and flour from town. He and his brothers were determined to lay in a greater store this year.
    â€œDo what you can today,” he told Simon. “If Ma feels better, I can come finish the job