“Yeah, why?”
“If he picked it up from Devon, he’ll infect everyone he meets. Or die alone in the wilderness.”
Lucy glanced back at the little boy in the bed, his frightened eyes bouncing between the two women. “Let’s hope he didn’t catch it then.”
“Quick as this is moving, it’s a better bet to hope he dies alone.”
It fell to Carter and Lucy to deliver the news to Devon’s wife. The family lived on a remote hill, because Abigail’s mistrust of people ran deep, even more so than Lynn’s. She preferred to take her chances on the hillside, somewhere her family had a good view of everything around them, their own well, and no other houses in sight.
Lucy trudged up the incline, her calf muscles burning. “I don’t know how Devon could’ve made this climb carrying Adam even if he were healthy,” she said.
Carter wiped the sweat off his forehead. “I know she’s got her reasons, but damn, this is inconvenient for the rest of us.”
“Lynn says she’s got a right to live up here, if that’s what she wants.”
“And what do you say?”
Lucy tripped on a branch and muttered a curse. “I say she can’t expect help to come running if we can’t hear her yelling for it.” Her breath hitched in her chest, and she slid to the ground. “Sorry, I gotta stop.” Days of tending the ill had stripped her of strength.
Carter rested next to her, their backs against a huge oak. “I’m not in a hurry to get up there, anyway. You and I aren’t exactly her favorite people.”
One of Lucy’s more ill-advised pranks had involved swapping out Abigail’s prized newborn calf with a stuffed animal of a cow. The punishment had been steep—Lynn had made her haul water from the pond for a month—but the fun had been worth it.
Lucy rolled her eyes. “I think being one of Abigail’s favorite people requires blood relation. So I’ll pass. Besides, there was no harm done.”
“You’re still a rabble-rouser.” Carter knocked his knee against hers.
“And you’re trouble.” She knocked it back.
“Remember you and me and Maddy slept up in her haymow so we could see her face when she came down to the barn in the morning?” Carter went on, laughing. “And Maddy didn’t know there was a bunch of kittens up there, ’til one of them jumped on her? Turned out that herbal soap your grandma gave Maddy for her birthday had catnip in it.”
“I swear I didn’t know that,” Lucy giggled.
“Maybe not, but you knew full well it was just a kitten in her hair, and you started screaming about bats anyway, and she went through the roof. You and me was trying to shush her up, but she woke up baby Adam all the way in the house.”
“Yeah.” Lucy’s smile faded. “Yeah, I remember.”
And now Maddy was dead, and the baby whose cries they’d wished away that night was a crippled little boy whose father might not live through the day.
Carter quieted as well, his own thoughts turning toward the present. He rose to his feet, holding out a hand for her. “C’mon then,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”
Abigail didn’t answer Carter’s knock. He tried again, but they heard no movement in the house. He pulled his fist back to try again, then froze mid motion. “You don’t suppose she caught it and died up here, do you?”
Lucy backed off the porch, glancing around the overgrown yard to the outbuildings. “Doubt it. The garden’s recently watered and the cows aren’t kicking up a fuss, wanting to be milked. She’s in there. She just doesn’t want to talk to us.”
“Better make my point then,” Carter said, and redoubled his efforts, pounding on the door.
Lucy stepped farther out into the yard and glanced up into the second story of the old farmhouse. A curtain hastily slipped back into place. “She’s up there,” she said to Carter. Then, more loudly, “Abigail, it’s Lucy from down by the pond. I need you to come out here and talk to us.”
Carter joined Lucy in the yard and called up at the window. “Abigail—it’s about your son. Get down here or we’ll walk off and you won’t know what’s happened.”
A thin voice crept through the open window. “If he’s dead, I don’t want to know.”
Carter sighed. “He ain’t dead. Now come down.”
They heard shuffling as she walked away from the open window, then nothing for several minutes until the front door creaked open. A small woman with ratted blond hair peered around the corner.
Lucy tried her best smile, one that could melt even Lynn at times. “We need to talk to you about Devon.”
“Thought you said this was about Adam?”
“Him too,” Carter said, stepping toward the porch.
“You stay back there,” Abigail said sharply, her thin voice suddenly strong. “I can hear you fine from the yard.”