If thou shouldst ever see Gabriel again, please tell him that I bear him no ill will. He gave me a beautiful daughter and I am content.

“Right then I knew what a terrible thing I had done. I had to tell Maddie, but I kept putting it off. I thought if I could find Gabriel first and confess to him, he’d go to England and claim Maddie and his child. I wrote to him, I did. Whenever I could get together enough money I sent off another letter, to all the places he talked about. Wrote on it, for Friend Gabriel Oak, Artist Originally of Baltimore, Should He Pass Through. I did that right until the judge went off to England hisself to bring Maddie home. Then I waited all those months until he came back, every day telling myself that when she was back, when I could look her in the eye, I would confess it all.

“But she didn’t come back and I never had word from Gabriel either, not until he come through Paradise some twenty years later, when Maddie was long in her grave, may the Good Lord rest her soul.

“I can see the question you afraid to ask on your face, Elizabeth. So let me just finish this sorry story and say yes, I did tell him then. I tolt him what I had done and I tolt him he had a daughter, born and raised in England in the belief that the judge was her daddy.

“I tole him all that and he just sat quiet, the way he had. Thoughtful. I wished he would shout at me but no, he just sat and thought for a long while. And then he ask, real calm, what was it did I want from him? As if he owed me something. As if I thought I deserved his forgiveness. I was going to say that, but then something else come into my mind. Something I could ask for, not for me, but for you, Elizabeth. I ask him for a picture of his own face, a portrait. So that I could send it to you one day and say, this is your daddy. Your mama loved him very much.

“And he say, yes, he would see to it that you got to see his likeness one day.”

“Oh,” Lily said. Tears trailed over her face but she made no attempt to wipe them away. “That day he asked me to draw him. You were there, Curiosity.”

“Yes, I was. I held him to that promise.”

Birdie sat up straight. “Is that the picture hanging in your room, Ma? Of the man with the—” she used her hands to describe the broad-rimmed hat Gabriel Oak had worn.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Lily gave me that drawing as a gift. I look at it every day.”

“That’s the story I been holding back all these years. I expect I’ll have to tell it again when I stand before God, and I won’t have no excuses because it was wrong, what I did. I will tell him what I’m telling you now, Elizabeth. I am heartily sorry.”

“I can see that,” Elizabeth said. “I can see that you are. But Curiosity, the penance you have inflicted on yourself has been too extreme. All these years of self-recrimination and guilt—”

“I was guilty,” Curiosity said.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “If you need to hear me say it, then yes. It was a mistake, and you should not have done it.”

Birdie came over and leaned against Elizabeth with all her slight weight, as she had done as a very little girl when she was uncertain and in fear of losing her balance. In a voice that was swollen with the tears she was trying to hold back, she said, “I don’t want you to be mad at Curiosity.”

Elizabeth put her arm around her youngest daughter’s waist. “I know,” she said. “But you must understand that the anger and sadness will pass with time. What will not pass are the feelings of love and affection and gratitude I feel for Curiosity. She has been the truest friend, as much a mother to me as my own.”

Curiosity had closed her eyes. The muscle fluttering in her cheek was the only proof that she had heard what Elizabeth was trying to tell her. Then she seemed to force herself into action. From her apron pocket Curiosity drew out two letters. Her hand was shaking when she held them out to Elizabeth. They were brittle with age, and neither of them had ever been opened.

“Many times I imagined this, of what it would be like to give these to you. All these years I been thinking on it. I never read them; you can see the seals ain’t never been broke. So now I am going to go back to my own place and set a while, leave you three to talk among yourselves. When you are ready to talk to me, Elizabeth, I will abide by whatever it is you want me to do.”

“But I know that already,” Elizabeth said. “I want you to stay here. Right here with us, where you belong.”

There was a small silence. Then Curiosity took a deep breath and let it go slowly. “So,” she said. “That teapot has gone and emptied itself again. I’ll be right back.”

She left the room without a backward glance, and Birdie would have started after her had Elizabeth not held her where she was.

“Leave her for now,” Elizabeth said. “Leave her a few minutes. She’ll come back to us. Wait and see.”

Chapter XXX

At Lake in the Clouds the party had already started when the walkers came into the clearing. The others greeted their arrival with shouts and laughter, everyone so happy to see one another and determined to have a good time that Martha was immediately drawn in, all her doubts gone just that easily.

Hannah took her by the hand and introduced her to the people she didn’t know—Susanna, Blue-Jay’s wife of a year; Susanna’s brother John, who had come up from Paradise earlier in the day; a young Mohawk brother and sister called Jumping-Bird and Little-Tree who were visiting from Good Pasture in Canada, and a few others whose names escaped her as soon as she had heard them.