With no pale shore in sight, the great green sea shimmered in the afternoon sun, grass for water, tides influenced not by the moon but by the soft breeze. Slender, buoyant harriers circled overhead, fishing for mice in the waves of grass. The vast timeless landscape and the quiet that lay on it gave Jane a sense of peace, though the mice probably did not share her mood.
After Leland and Nadine Sacket had bought the six-hundred-acre dude ranch, they rebuilt and expanded it into the first-class Sacket Home and School, where now 139 children resided. Of the opinion that children without parents deserved to grow up in a magical place to compensate for their loss, the Sackets kept the Western theme of the structures; the school resembled an idealized prairie town circa 1880. There were ponies and horses, so that every child might learn from riding instructors and be not only well educated but also well seasoned by the land and its traditions.
To prevent staff members from recognizing Jane, the Sackets drove one of the school’s buses to meet her and Luther at the ranch entrance, a mile from its buildings. A day earlier, Chase Longrin outlined for them the terms under which they needed to take these eight: The kids must not initially be included in school records and must be protected from discovery by visiting social workers; the eight were coached to tell other children that they were moving from an orphanage closing in Oklahoma; the truth of their past could not be revealed even to the Sackets until an indefinite future date. Leland and Nadine’s doubts were outweighed by their conviction that every child in need was sent to them by the spirit of the son they had lost to meningitis when he was three.
Harley Higgins and the other children of Iron Furnace had been with Jane and Luther less than two full days, but they were loath to be separated from them. She knelt to smooth their hair, kiss them, and tell them that Luther would either remain with them or soon return when he settled some business of his. She, too, would come back one day. Meanwhile, the good people of this special place would never become strangers to them, as had their own parents.
She hoped these promises wouldn’t prove false.
As Jane finished with the children, Luther led them to the bus, assuring them that he was their sheriff, always looking after them.
Harley hurried back to her and took her hand and squeezed it hard. He tried to say something and could not.
She kissed his brow and held him close and said, “I know. I know, sweetheart,” and took him by the hand to the bus.