They went off toward the stream, laughing and shrieking, the terror of the tank battle forgotten for the moment. Emil ignored his mother’s disapproval and watched them go, his heart warmed that his sons could find a way to play and laugh while trying to outrun a war.

Johann coughed, then coughed deeper, rattling from his chest. He paused, but then was racked by a longer coughing fit that finally brought up mucus that he spat out on the ground. He took a step with a bewildered expression on his face.

“You should sit now, Johann,” Karoline called over, looking concerned and then glaring at her son. “You see, getting the wood has already weakened him.”

“It’s just a little cough, Karoline,” Johann said, but sat on a stump, his back to one wheel of his wagon. “I’ve been through worse.”

“It’s a little cough that almost killed you in the mines,” his wife shot back.

“A little cough set me free, didn’t it?”

“And look at you,” she said, still bitter that he’d been taken from her by Stalinists in the middle of the night and sent to Siberia, just like Adeline’s father.

Johann, a farmer, had been a man used to living outside, but they put him to work below ground. He spent nearly seven years in the mines, digging coal, before his cough began, and then spread to other prisoners. By his own account, Johann almost died twice while more men came down with the mysterious ailment. The Soviets in charge of the mine feared they’d lose their entire work base and decided that instead of treating or killing the sick men, they’d set them free, kick them out of the camps, tell them to go home.

Sick, feverish, Emil’s father had boarded a freight train in the middle of summer and rode west for weeks in blistering heat before finding his way back to southern Russia. He was emaciated, racked by coughing, and filthy with grime when he knocked at Karoline’s door. She had not recognized her own husband.

Neither had his son, who thought his father had aged forty years in the seven he’d been gone. And it wasn’t just the mysterious lung sickness. The years in the mines of Siberia had done something to Johann, broken him somehow, robbed him of his inner fire. In the years after his return, he’d often be found staring off into the middle distance, transported to some dark past he rarely spoke of. Emil’s mother said he would often awake screaming at night, feverish and drenched in sweat.

“Where is Rese?” Emil said.

“Your sister’s sleeping,” she said. “All the jolting in the wagon that last bit made her sick to her stomach.”

“Emil?” Adeline called before Emil could reply. “Are we good for the fire?”

Emil turned to see Adeline, Lydia, and Malia bringing pots and cooking supplies.

“We’re good,” he called. “And the boys are bringing more wood.”

Adeline nodded, but as she came closer, her attention left her husband and darted to her mother-in-law, focusing then on Karoline gazing at the fire. Try as she might, Adeline could not help thinking of a small bottle of cream and feeling a familiar bitterness spoil her stomach. She mentally put her armor on, went to the fire, crouched, and with a stick began drawing glowing coals off to the side.

From childhood, Adeline had been by nature a warm, giving person, with hardly ever a cross word to say about anyone. But her mother-in-law was not anyone. Karoline was a cold, heartless being. Adeline could not stand being around her and avoided the woman as often as possible.

“No hellos?” Karoline said out of the corner of her mouth.

Adeline looked up, forced a smile. “Oh, hello, Karoline. I’m sorry. Mind’s on supper. Thank you for letting us use your fire. It’s very nice of you.”

Karoline studied her a moment, and then moved her focus to Adeline’s mother. Lydia greeted Emil’s mother, and thanked her for the fire as well, knowing that acting subordinate tended to make Karoline less testy. Adeline put the pot on the coals and heated a stew they’d made from potatoes, onions, and salt pork.

“Put these in, too!” Malia cried, rushing over with a bunch of baby wild asparagus. “I found them near our wagon! Like someone planted them just for us!”

Adeline’s older sister seemed so delighted, not even Karoline’s presence could stop Adeline from smiling and taking the asparagus from her. It had been twenty years since Malia had gone to feed the family mules and been kicked, two decades since she’d lain in a coma when no one thought she had a chance of living. But Malia had spirit and woke up, certainly changed in many ways, but also the same as she’d ever been: sincere, kind, loving, and oddly funny. Adeline had adored her as a child and adored her still.

The boys returned, pushing their little wagon, now filled with two big broken branches, up the hill from the creek bottom.

Emil walked over, and in the glow of the fire, walked around the two branches, studying them. “Well,” he said at last, “I think Walt’s branch is bigger.”

“What?” Will said.

“I told you!” Walt crowed.

“But,” their father said, “given the fact, Walt, that you have two years on Will, and eight kilos, I declare it a tie.”

“What?” Walt said.

“A tie!” Will said, dancing around.

Walt looked dejected until Emil reminded him that firewood would be needed every night until their journey was over, and Adeline went over to give him and his brother a hug.

“Why’d you hug us, Mama?” Will asked.

“For getting the firewood.”

“Should we hug you for making dinner?”

“Yes, please,” she said, teasing him. “And for everything else I do for you.”

A girl’s voice grumbled loudly behind them. “Stop with all the hugging. It’s giving me a headache on top of my stomachache.”

Adeline looked across the fire, past her mother-in-law, and saw Emil’s sister, twenty-one-year-old Theresa, who was climbing down from their wagon. Known as “Rese,” she was dressed as Adeline and the other women were, in heavy, dark wool jackets and long smock skirts, but unlike the other women, Rese wore her golden hair down rather than wrapped in a kerchief or wool scarf.

“How do you feel?” her mother asked.

Rese had her hands jammed in the pockets of her jacket. “Like I’m freezing and there’s a nail in my head and I want to puke.”

The boys started laughing. Adeline smiled. She liked Rese. As with her own sister, you never knew what she was going to say.

Sure enough, Malia tapped her head and chimed in, “Could be worse. You could have a mule kick your skull.”

Rese stopped, tapped her lower lip. “I will not argue with you, Malia. A mule kick to the skull would be worse than wanting to puke when you’ve got a nail in your head.”

Will and Walt laughed at her again. Even Emil chuckled until Karoline said, “That’s enough, all of you. Don’t encourage her. Rese, do you ever think before you speak?”

Emil’s sister walked past her mother, dismissively. “What fun would that be?”

“My God, what have I created?” Karoline said.

Adeline caught a flicker of pain crossing Rese’s face before she smiled and said, “You didn’t create me alone, Mother.”

Her mother gasped at her impudence. Johann smiled.

Rese held her cold hands out to the fire. “And think: if God had a hand in it, too, if being born is a miracle like you once told me, Mother, then I am a miracle, and I am everything I am supposed to be right now. Right?”

Karoline was staring at her like she was speaking another language. Malia broke into a huge grin.

“Johann,” Karoline complained, “where does she think these things?”

He shrugged, still smiling.

“In her brain,” Walt said.

Rese laughed, pointed at Walt. “I like how my little nephew thinks.”

Karoline threw up her hands, looked to the first stars in the night sky, and said, “I give up. She’s beyond me.”

Rese came around the fire and talked to the boys while Adeline stirred the stew. When she was done, Rese came over and whispered, “Ever notice how it’s always about Mother? What did ‘I’ create? What did ‘I’ give up?”

“Now that you mention it.”

“Deep down, I think she doesn’t like other people because she doesn’t like herself.”

“I gave up trying to understand your mother a long time ago,” Adeline said, and retrieved the pot from the coals.

Lydia brought bowls that Adeline filled with piping hot stew.

“That smells great,” Rese said. “Can I have some?”

Her mother heard that. “You have your supper here. Biscuits and dried meat.”

“Biscuits and dried meat?” Rese complained. “It’s cold out, Mother. I’d rather eat what they’re eating.”

“I’m sure you would,” her mother said. “But if we all eat like that now, we’ll all be starving before this journey’s over.”

There was a long, uncomfortable silence that was finally broken by Malia, who looked up from her stew bowl, smiled at Karoline, and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Sunshine.”