“There are fifteen.”
“There’s room.”
Boone looked around the chamber, at the low roof, the stone, the cows, the children, the dog, the impossible safety of it. “I told you this would be your grave.”
“You told me what you believed.” Her tone held no sting. “Now bring them.”
He bowed his head then, not in submission but in a kind of moral pain far worse than frostbite. “I was wrong.”
Evelyn’s face softened. “Most people are, before they learn.”
The next days turned the ravine into a pilgrimage.
Boone returned with his family in a human chain through the fog. The Millers followed, Mary weeping because she was sure the baby in her arms had already gone. In the warmth of the chamber the child stirred and cried, and Mary fell to her knees sobbing thanks into Scout’s fur. The Hendersons came, then the Cross family, then Reverend Reed leading members of his own congregation, all of them reduced by weather to their most honest selves.
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