Four days later, the sound of the door opening made Effie pull off Sally’s cloth. She squinted at bright light coming in a window and Bridget with a hand on the backdoor latch.
“You opened a curtain again. I made them for a reason.” She sat up. “Where you going?”
“I told Jake I’d come back. I came in because I’m hungry, but the cornbread is all gone.”
Effie didn’t need reminding. They’d stretched the pound of mill flour and the pound of beans to last three days, fighting hunger each one of those days. After Graf tallied the price of the black fabric, thread, needles, and the ingredients for curing lice, she’d been too embarrassed to ask for eggs or butter or a second pound of beans. She dreaded going back—the long stretch of trees, passing what she now knew was the Injun’s place, crossi
