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took her hand and held it gently.
          “Timothy Elgerson,” she began. “When I see trouble on your face it makes all the difference to me.”
          She sat on the bed and faced him, her expression kind and full of concern.
          “I just can’t seem to stop worrying. All day, every day, he’s just on my mind all the time.”
          He stood up and slipped his arm back into his shirt sleeve. “I know I have plenty of other things to think about, to do. Poor Loo is so depressed since he left and I can’t even cheer her up because I’m not much better myself. I can’t stop thinking I shouldn’t have let him go. I know all of the reasons he wanted to leave but I just should have said ‘no’.” He paced the room slowly.
          “Timothy,” she said. “He wanted this. He was so serious about it. I wondered myself if it wasn’t a good idea for him to get away. How could we force him to stay?”
          “I know, I know.” He surrendered to her argument.
          “You can’t keep punishing yourself.”
          “Then why am I?” He turned to her, his face drawn with worry. “I just can’t seem to stop.”
          “He’s been writing every week like he promised.” Rebecca wondered which one of them she was trying to convince.
          “The postcards say so little. ‘Miss you, doing fine, all okay.’ Do you think they are saying that he’s happy?”
          “No,” she admitted. “Maybe he’s just not over everything yet. Maybe he just needs more time.” She looked down at her hands in her lap and realized that she had wrung her handkerchief into a tight twist.
          “I don’t know what to do.” Timothy sunk down into the chair. “I don’t know what is in his mind. When he was a kid he’d mope sometimes. When Corissa died he moped for years. I couldn’t find a way with him. I’d just ask him to tell me what he was thinking and he’d get this long face and he wouldn’t spit it out.
          “I don’t think he was all that crazy over that girl. I don’t think he was in love with her. I figured once the truth was out it would be all resolved. I thought he’d just get over it.
          “Like when we moved back here after he found you at the cabin,” he continued. “He was so much happier. Was it you? What worked then?”
          Rebecca scowled and put her fingers to her face.
          Timothy looked at her questioningly. “What are you thinking?”
          “I was remembering the day he climbed into the trunk,” she admitted and looked into his eyes, tears welling in her own.
          Timothy’s mind rushed back to the hours of torture when the boy had found the big chest in the attic and climbed inside, wanting to be with his dead mother. The whole town had searched everywhere for him before Rebecca finally found him there. It was more horrible than Timothy Elgerson wanted to imagine. “I don’t see how or why that changed anything,” he grumbled.
          “You’re right,” she sighed. “Let me finish rubbing this into that shoulder.” She stood up behind the chair.
          “I’m alright,” he sighed. “Just a few more months. I’ll get him to come back in the spring either way. Once he’s home then we’ll figure it out. We’ll just have to wait until then.”
          Rebecca coaxed him out of his shirt again and reapplied the ointment.
     
          “Cousin Emma,” Louisa rolled a tiny ball under her hand along the kitchen table at the Vancouver house where she was helping with the younger boys. “Do you think that Mark went away because of me?”
          “Because of you?” Emma turned from doing her dishes and looked at the girl in surprise. “Of course not! Why on earth would you think that?” She dried her hands on the nearby towel and sat at the table facing the child.
          “He said he wanted to get away. What did he want to get away