Myrtle stared at him as if he had something on his face.

Rubbing a hand across his beard, he didn't dislodge anything. "Do I have food stuck in my teeth?"

"No." She chewed a bit on her lower lip. "I'm just trying to reason out why Anthony didn't want to go with you. You seem plenty nice."

"I'm nothing special." He snatched the towel from her hand and wiped up his spilled cream, which earned him another wide-eyed stare. "I've got two crates full of Lucy's things upstairs I meant to give you the day Anthony ran. Don't know if you could stand wearing a dead woman's dresses, but I'd want you to have them. Remake them to fit you or your siblings or use them for rags-whatever would help you most."

Myrtle pursed her lips, angry-like. "Anthony's got his head all screwed up the wrong way, that's what."

Silas raised an eyebrow.

"No white man's ever given me dresses unless he wants-"

"Oh no." The back of Silas's neck flamed. How could a girl barely older than Anthony insinuate such a thing . . . even know to insinuate such a thing? The cream in his stomach curdled. "I didn't mean-"

"I know that's not what you mean." She stole the wet towel from him. "I'll be done here in about an hour, then you come with me to my house."

"I thought you realized that's not what I meant." He cupped a cold hand against his neck, trying not to look disgusted. He didn't want her to think poorly of herself, but- "Oh stop. I know where Anthony is."

The heat in his neck drained, and his legs turned into soft lead. He stood and had to catch himself before he fell over. "What did you say?"

Mrs. Grindall poked her head into the dining room. "Aren't you done in here yet? You got another tub of laundry to do before you go. I don't have time for your dillydallying." She glared at Myrtle, and then at him.

He handed Myrtle his coffee cup, his hand shaking so badly he was afraid the dregs might actually slosh enough to make it over the brim. "Here."

He couldn't say any more with Mrs. Grindall staring at him like that. After walking past them both, he stopped outside the dining room and stared at the lopsided pictures hanging on the hallway wall. Had he imagined it, or had Myrtle said she knew where Anthony was? His muscles bunched tight.

He tried to relax, but how could he until he saw his son again with his own eyes?

Moving silently behind Myrtle, Silas followed her down a street he'd visited twice this past month. The only things he'd unearthed during those visits were suspicious glances and tight-lipped responses. He'd figured a white man knocking on doors in a black neighborhood was so unusual they assumed he had ill intentions.

Myrtle stopped in front of a leaning shack, one similar in size and shape to the structure Kate showed him where his wife and Anthony had lived before Lucy got sick. No bigger than the cramped soddy he used to live in-the one Lucy'd complained about every day. "Didn't you say you have four siblings?"

"And a father who left us. Mother's dead." Myrtle's eyes darted off to the right.

He looked over his shoulder. Three shacks away, two men stared at him. Another man across the street had stopped walking, a large load of firewood in his arms. The flour-sack curtain in his shack's solitary window dropped back into place.

Myrtle pushed a stray lock of hair off her forehead. "Maybe I shouldn't have brought you."

"This isn't the first time I've been here."

With a quick glance at him, she inhaled sharply, then turned the knob. A little girl with short curly hair scurried out and clamped herself to Myrtle's knees. "MeeMee!"

Myrtle placed a hand on what must be her little sister's back and stepped into the shack. "George, I've brought-"

A large mountain of a young man shoved Myrtle behind him and filled up the doorway. His eyes raked Silas. "What're you doing with Myrtle?"

Silas held out his palms and swallowed hard.

Myrtle popped out from beneath the man's outspread arms. "I brought him here, George."

The man blinked, then his face grew harder.

Silas took a step back. "I'm only here looking for my son." He recalled this man. A few weeks ago, George had given him a glare as chilly as the one icing his forehead now, but from the yard of a different house.

George glowered at his sister, his rage barely hidden. "Why didn't you just bring along the lynch mob?"

Silas pulled off his hat and assumed what he hoped was a nonthreatening posture. "I'm not looking to blame anyone for anything. All I want is information about Anthony Riverton."

The chubby girl who'd buried herself in Myrtle's skirts peeped up at him as if she'd never seen a stranger before. Myrtle stepped in front of her brother and pushed back against him. "Mr. Jonesey's all right. He ain't meaning to harm us none."

George didn't take his eyes off Silas. "Doesn't matter if he don't want to harm us none. If word gets out we're housing a white boy-"

Silas's chest inflated with weightlessness. Here! Anthony was here! "I could come inside and wait until dark to take him home."

George's large round eyes found a way to get larger.

"I don't care why you have him as long as he's healthy and whole." He stepped forward. "If you'd like to question me-if you're worried I'm unfit to be a father-I'm willing to talk, to set your mind at ease."

The big man's mouth unhinged. He moved his lips as if he wanted to say something, but no words came out.

Silas tentatively held out a shaky hand. "Please."

George glanced at his open palm but made no move to touch him. He fastened his gaze back on Silas's and talked out of the side of his mouth. "Get Anthony."

Myrtle gave Silas an apologetic look and ducked back under her brother and into the house. A moment later, Anthony came out, arms crossed.

How he wanted to sweep his son into his arms and hug the stubbornness out of him. But he wasn't about to shout and alert the neighborhood that George had been keeping a white boy in his home.

Myrtle appeared with the bag he'd bought Anthony weeks ago. "I'm real sorry I didn't tell you where he was, Mr. Jonesey. I thought I was helping."

"Don't apologize. You did help." He'd have offered his hand to George again, but the man still looked immovable, though his glare had softened. "Thank you for taking care of him."

"I help those who need it." George straightened and then slammed the door.

A knock sounded on Kate's bedroom door. "There's someone here to see you," Mrs. Logan's voice called.

"I'll be right down." Kate put the primer she was reviewing on her desk and glanced at Leonora, who'd just put on her long flannel nightgown. The sun's darkening orange light bled through the cotton eyelet curtains and suffused the oldest Logan girl's tiny attic room. "Good thing I put off retiring."

She frowned at her boots at the end of her trundle and then toward her house slippers. Crossing over to the little window, she tried to see down to the front door below, but the eaves obscured the drive, like they always did. Who'd come to see her at this hour?

It wouldn't be Silas. Mrs. Logan definitely wouldn't have let him call on her at this hour without having a conniption. Kate sighed and repinned her hair until it appeared presentable.

What if her visitor was Mr. Kingfisher? Would it matter if he saw her in house slippers?

Of course it would. She grabbed her boots.

After making her way down the steep, narrow stairs, she slowed and peeped around the angled wall to the foyer area, but no one stood there. She took the last of the stairs as quietly as possible and found Mr. Logan smoking a pipe beside his wife in the parlor-no one else. Kate cleared her throat, and Mrs. Logan indicated the front door with a tip of her head rather than putting down her embroidery hoop. "He's out front."

Kate's throat tightened. She should just ask who awaited her, but the fact that the woman hadn't told her didn't bode well. Why hadn't the Logans invited him inside? Wouldn't that have been more proper than sending her out alone at dusk? Kate smoothed her hands along the planes of her simple dress and grabbed her shawl off the foyer hook.

She opened the door and fell on her knees. "Anthony!"

The boy stood on the bottom step, his hands behind his back, one foot crossed behind the other, his head hung low. A slight movement a few yards away by the poplar caught her eye. Silas had found him!

She held her arms wide, and when Anthony didn't come, she reached for him and smashed him against her. "I'm so glad you're back." She sniffed against the wetness taking over her eyes, nose, and throat.

If her heart were a cage equipped with a strong padlock and chains to keep him there, she'd never let him escape again. She glanced over Anthony's head toward his father, who sported a charming, albeit sad smile. She forced the boy out in front of her at arms' length and attempted not to shake him. "What were you thinking?"

Anthony at least looked remorseful, though he wouldn't meet her eyes.

"Do you know how much you worried your father and me?" A flush crawled across her cheeks. Her question sounded like what Anthony's mother-Silas's wife-might say rather than a teacher.

But she felt like this boy's mother. That's why her heart hurt so much to see him again, knowing he was safe . . . knowing he'd soon be as far out of reach as he'd been yesterday. She looked at Silas, whose smile had faded. His eyes seemed even more beseeching than when he'd begged her to dump his liquor for him. What could he want from her? He had what he wanted. She pulled Anthony closer, hoping he'd soften a little. "Where have you been?"

"He was at Myrtle's." Silas's rough voice answered for the mute boy.

Myrtle? "Who?"

"The young black maid who serves at the boardinghouse."

She turned back to Anthony, her fingers digging into his arms more than they should. "You were there this whole time?" At his nod, she did shake him a little to make him look at her. "Do you know how much trouble you'd bring her family if certain people discovered they'd been hiding you? Especially if Richard found you!"

The boy shook his head, his Adam's apple bobbing a few times, protesting his attempts at swallowing. "I didn't want to get them in trouble."

Kate looked over the top of Anthony's head at Silas. "I thought you checked every neighborhood."

"I did, but no one near Myrtle's gave me more than a shake of their head. They might not have known, or if they did, they feared what would happen. I'd knocked on Myrtle's door, but no one answered."

Anthony shifted away from her. "They told me no one could know where I was. They were trying to figure out where I should go and how to take me there without anyone knowing, but I didn't want to go anywhere, not until Pa and Mr. Jonesey left. I wanted to come back to you." His big eyes dripped with more heartache and sorrow than a boy of nine should know.

Silas pushed off the tree and walked toward them. "They should be all right. No one knows where he was but us, Myrtle's family, and some neighbors." He put his hands on Anthony's shoulders. The two of them standing together made her throat ache. Silas had found his family, but what about her? She'd soon trudge back up a tiny staircase to sleep on a sliver of a bed for the rest of the school term before trundling off to another student's house next year.

Pressing a hand against Anthony's slightly wavy hair, she smoothed it away from his face. "Don't you ever run away from your father again. He told you he's your real pa, right? The court even says so."

Confusion flashed in his eyes. "But I was coming back to you. Don't you want me?"

She blinked against the tears welling up. "I'll always want you, but . . ." Her throat closed off for a second, and while keeping her hand tight on his shoulder, she stood and looked into Silas's worried eyes. "Do you mind if I talk to him alone?"

The right side of Silas's mouth turned up. Oh, he was handsome. And not just because of the way his eyes looked just now, but because she didn't have to worry whether he'd love this boy he barely knew or give him a better life than she could.

"Just keep him in sight, if you would." He gave Anthony's shoulder a squeeze, then walked back to the poplar.

"Let's go to the swing." She took Anthony's cold hand and led him to the tilted oak. She gestured to the rough wood plank tied at the end of the knotted ropes, but Anthony didn't sit.

She smashed her skirts to sit between the ropes and took both of his hands in hers, hoping to warm his ice-cold fingers. The sun's fiery glow warmed his hair. "I'm so glad your father found you. He's been worried you were gone forever. You're his only family, and he's the only family you have now too."

He took a tentative step forward, his chest puffed as if he were filling his lungs for a good cry. "You don't want me anymore?"

"Oh, Anthony, I want you more than ever." She pulled him in for a hug, but his bony little shoulders stayed stiff. "I'm a lot like you, you know. I've never been good at obeying authority or doing what I ought." She pulled back and gave him a grin. "My parents were good people, but I often ignored my chores to run in the pastures with the puppies or anything else I thought sounded fun. But when I was a little older than you, they died and I went to live with my older sister and her husband. Do you remember the story of Cinderella?"

He nodded.

"They treated me more like a maid than a sister, but I wasn't as good as Cinderella. I argued and hid and did as little as possible. My brother-in-law wasn't nice to me or my sister because of how I behaved, and no Prince Charming came to rescue me." Probably because she chose to steer her own pumpkin and never ended up in front of the right castle.

"But Mr. Jonesey is not like my brother-in-law. He cares so much about you, though he's only just met you-before he even knew he was your father. He spent hours knocking on doors trying to find you; he went to the orphanage he grew up in to look for you, even though it wasn't-"

"But Mother didn't like him. How do you know he won't be awful to me after we leave?"

"I think your mother and Mr. Jonesey had a hard time getting along, but he seems to have learned from it. It's good to learn from your mistakes." Was that why she was always in a bind? Because she needed to start learning from her mistakes-pay attention to propriety, stop shirking authority, quit agreeing to hasty marriages?

She smoothed Anthony's hair. "He used to drink, but he doesn't anymore. He knows that got him into trouble with your mother, and he doesn't want to hurt you like he did her."

"You said he only wanted me for chores."

"Did I say that?" What kind of parent would she have been, telling him such things with no more proof than one person's word against another's? "I don't think that way anymore. I think he'll expect you to help around his farm, as you should, but not to the point he'll be unfair. He'll want you to learn how to homestead so when you leave-when you're much, much older . . ." She poked him in the chest and tried to smile big enough he'd give her one back, but he refused. "You'll be a wonderful, hardworking, knowledgeable man. You'll grow to love Silas. I'm sure of it."

Who wouldn't love Silas after being with him for a while? She swallowed. Had she grown to love him? She hadn't lied to Anthony. She believed Silas to be all she'd described. If only she could find a happy ending like Anthony would.

"I want you to go with him, not because I don't wish to keep you, but because he'll give you a better life than I could, a better one than I had myself."

Anthony nodded slightly, then sighed, his little chest caving in on itself as he slumped into submission. She pulled him into an embrace and talked against his hair. "I'll miss you more than anything, so we need to enjoy the rest of the time we have together-"

"We're leaving tomorrow," he mumbled against her shoulder.

She stopped rubbing Anthony's arm. Her lips twitched. "Tomorrow?" She shouldn't have said that aloud. It sounded so . . . whiny.

But tomorrow? She'd just gotten him back! "Oh, Anthony. If you hadn't run, we could have had more time." She swallowed against the lump in her throat.

"I'm sorry, Miss Dawson. I thought . . . I didn't want to go with Pa or Mr. Jonesey."

"Silas is your pa, Anthony, and he's a good man. In time, he'll show you."

Still leaning against the poplar, Silas watched them. A kind, wistful look on his face.

She stood and turned Anthony by the shoulder and gently pushed him toward his father. She couldn't look into either of their faces or she might cry. "We'll write to each other every week. It'll force you to practice your penmanship."

The boy groaned, and she ruffled his hair. She left her fingers curled into his thick locks at the base of his neck, unable to take her hand away from him. Would this be the last time she touched him?

"Are we better?" Silas cleared his throat, love and concern nearly dripping from his eyes as he looked at his son.

"Is there any way you might . . ." She frowned down at Anthony. She didn't want him to argue with his father, so she shouldn't model the behavior. "Anthony, why don't you go inside and get yourself a cup of tea? Mrs. Logan always has some brewing. It'll warm you up."

The boy nodded and scuffed his way inside.

The second the door closed behind him, she turned to Silas, her right hand wringing her left. "There wouldn't be any way you could stay longer?"

"I shouldn't, not with my farm being in the condition Will says it is. Plus, if Anthony wanted to run, he knows Breton, knows people here willing to help him, but he won't in Kansas. He'll have to rely on me there."