Adelaide, like all the other women who stayed over, was invited to sleep in the main house. The bedrooms filled with children and their mothers, so Adelaide was left to sleep in a chair in the living room on the ground floor. There were two other chairs here. Grace slept in one. Sam chose not to sleep with the boys in the nearby bedroom, but out here by his mother. Maybe it was true that he didn’t get along well with other kids. Funny how this only made Adelaide feel more tender toward the child. Men bedded down out on the granary floor.
Difficult to claim Adelaide enjoyed any rest. Instead, she kept getting up to wander the main house, scanning for Mrs. Mudge. Why did this woman’s lie bother her? A guilty soul is always troubled by its reflection.
Eventually Adelaide had to stay in her seat, though, no matter how agitated. A Black woman wandering a white person’s home in the night risks being treated like a servant or a thief. Adelaide eventually shut her eyes, but it hardly counted as rest.
In the morning Matthew Kirby came inside and woke her up. He leaned over her, looking like he could use a bath. Smelling that way, too. She reached out and touched his face and he seemed to glow under the tenderness. The night before, while they were dancing, he’d told her he was all of twenty-three.
She looked for Grace, but Grace and Sam had already risen. When Matthew helped her up, led her out of the main house, she felt relieved he hadn’t tried to kiss her last night. Sweet as he was, she’d decided—when, she couldn’t be sure—they were never going to become a couple.
Was it his age? Partly. But even more she had resigned herself to a certain life, and already her closeness with Grace and Sam and Finn and Matthew had expanded her heart farther than she’d imagined it could grow. She just couldn’t imagine giving any more of herself. That wasn’t why she’d come here. She had a burden that was hers to shoulder.
And as the last of the Henry family, she had to carry it alone.
Now Matthew led her into the morning light, past the granary, which had already been swept clean, equipment hauled back inside. Outside the corral, Grace and Sam were on a horse and Finn, still half asleep, held it by the reins.
“How did Sam sleep?” Adelaide asked Grace.
But Grace didn’t look at her. Instead, she tapped her boy’s arm and said, “Answer Mrs. Henry.”
Sam, who had been busy counting clouds, looked to Adelaide, nodded, and said, “Good.” Then he returned to scanning the skies.
“And you, Mrs. Price?” Adelaide asked Grace.
Grace nodded, nothing more. She spoke to Finn instead.
“Long trip. Should we begin, Mr. Kirby?”
Finn waved one hand in the air and didn’t stir at all. How late had he stayed up? How much Special Brew had he hit? It seemed a lucky thing Finn could walk straight at all.
Adelaide watched them move on. She felt stung by Grace’s coldness, and confused by it. Matthew brought Adelaide to another horse and helped her up. He pulled the reins of the horse and led it forward. Adelaide watched Grace, waiting for her to look back so they might talk, but Grace only stared into the horizon.
They’d gone a quarter mile before Adelaide realized Matthew and Finn weren’t leading them to the other two horses.
“We rode here on four horses,” she said. “Why are we only returning on two?”
“Horses gone missing,” said Matthew.
The words came out weary and she realized he and his uncle must’ve been up looking for the other horses for hours already. She remembered the bone-deep exhaustion on Mr. Olsen’s face the morning after pulling the wagon out of the coulee. She hadn’t known him well enough to offer much kindness, but she knew Matthew better. She felt her tenderness like a shawl she wanted to drape across his shoulders.
“Well, you’re not going to walk all the way back, are you?”
“Weren’t sure how you’d feel about riding with me.”
“I don’t want to see you drop dead from exhaustion, Mr. Kirby.”
He stopped and called over to his uncle, who had a few words with Grace.
Grace spoke loudly, almost exasperated. “Why didn’t you just say so, Mr. Kirby!”
The men climbed up and got the horses trotting. With so much weight on the animals, they took the journey slow.
“What happened?” Adelaide asked. “To your horses.”
Matthew grunted as they rode. He remained quiet for another quarter mile.
“Four horses gone missing this morning,” Matthew said. “Two of ours and two from the folks that own this place.”
“Stolen?”
“That’s right,” Matthew said. “By kids.”
“Kids?” Adelaide asked.
“Four boys. Seen riding off on them before the sun came up.”
Adelaide had her hand around Matthew’s middle. She squeezed so tightly he coughed with surprise.
Four boys.