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“I never mope,” said her mother, returning to her chopping.

But that evening after Adele had finished washing the supper dishes, she caught her parents whispering in the parlor.

They hushed and drew apart when she entered the room.

The next morning at breakfast, her father said, “Dellie, you still want two more steers?” Her mother ahem-ed loudly from over by the stove.

“Same deal as before,” he quickly added.

“All your housework done. You’re to help your mother when she needs you.

” Her mother ahem-ed again. “And you’re to keep working on your hope chest.”

Now was not the time to explain she’d never need one. She thanked her parents and dashed upstairs for the cigar box.

By the time war consumed Europe, Adele had four steers.

By the time James and John and the other young men she knew were conscripted, she had six.

Claude Demmings was conscripted, too, and Pauline moved back to the Clemson ranch, bringing her two young sons with her.

She hadn’t said anything, but Adele could see from the dark circles beneath Pauline’s eyes and the swelling at her waistline that her sister was expecting a third.

With Pauline home and the boys gone, her mother let Adele escape the kitchen and help her father with the ranch work.

She’d never been good with the horses, and she didn’t enjoy repairing fences or herding cattle, but she had an aptitude for machinery.

If the spark plugs in the motor trucks needed changing, Adele took care of it.

If the belts on the baler needed replacing, she did that too.

She handled the oil changes, the carburetor flushing, the tire patching.

“Dellie will look it over,” her father said when any of the ranch hands reported a mechanical problem.

Their eyes held respect for her now, rather than dismissal.

That respect was something new for Adele, who never got it in the parlor or the kitchen.

Her mother, after expressing pride in her quilt blocks, never again found much to admire about her sewing.

When Adele was asked to display pieces of her scant hope chest for visiting ladies, they hmm-ed politely, said something bland about the fine quality of the fabric, then changed the subject. Usually to Pauline.

Pretty Pauline. Even though she was expecting, she took the time to curl her hair into ringlets. She tatted lace for her collars and cuffs, lace she managed to keep blindingly white. She kept her little boys clean and carried herself with a grace that most women in the family way couldn’t manage.

After the ladies left, Mrs. Clemson would carry on for the rest of the day about how Adele wasn’t doing herself any favors. And what did she need to be raising steers for anyway?

“Money,” said Adele.

What did she need money for? Didn’t her father provide her with everything she needed?

Adele agreed that he did, deciding not to mention that she was saving her money to buy a car of her very own.

She wanted one desperately. Not a motor truck.

Not a ranch-worthy vehicle. But an actual motorcar.

For driving. As far from the house as she could get.

So that she wouldn’t have to hear her mother lament her unfortunate height and nose, her untidy hair, her insufficiently feminine wardrobe, her diminishing marital prospects.

“What marital prospects?” Adele asked one evening. “They’re all in France.”

“Not forever,” said Mrs. Clemson. “They’ll all be home before you know it. And they’ll be looking for wives. So you’d best make yourself appealing. Clean the grease out from under your fingernails at the very least.”

They didn’t all come home. Adele scanned every issue of the newspaper, praying not to see James or John on the lists of the dead and injured.

In August, Infantryman Richard C. Greer jumped off the page at her, and she was back in the schoolyard kissing Dickie on the lips, breathing in his cut-grass boy scent, whispering that if he told her how he’d gotten that scar, she’d keep his secret always. The grave would keep it now.

In September, a telegram arrived informing them that James had been gravely wounded. Another arrived a week later informing them that he had died. Death Instantaneous. He Did Not Suffer.

Tall, quiet James, who had patiently allowed her to climb all over him when she was little.

Who had carried her on his shoulders. Who had pushed her endlessly on the swing in the barn.

How could they lie so blatantly about his death?

How could they have shipped him across an ocean and put him in a trench in the first place?

A righteous wail rose in Adele’s chest, but Pauline put a hand on her shoulder, nodded toward their parents, and said, “Dellie, don’t.

” Their father’s face was slack, his eyes empty of outrage, of anything.

Her mother’s eyes were fixed on the carpet.

To wail would be unseemly. They were Clemsons. They would bear their grief in silence.

There was no body to bury, no funeral, only the constant autumn work.

There was Pauline’s belly growing bigger by the day.

There was, thank God, at last a letter from John, postmarked weeks before James’s death.

Impossible to know if he’d heard of his brother’s passing.

Impossible to know if he himself was alive this very moment.

He had, he wrote, made a good friend, Charles Ector, from one county over.

They played cards. Charles nearly always won, but John claimed he didn’t mind.

It was something to pass the time. They had created their own deck from three partials, discarded by others.

They had painstakingly re-marked an extra three of diamonds to make it the eight of spades, which they’d lacked.

Adele read and reread the letter, thinking that John wrote an awful lot about card games for someone who’d never cared for cards.

“It’s because the rest is too horrible to write about,” Pauline told her. “Claude says more than John, but not much. They’re trying to spare us.”

Pauline’s first two children were born at her own home, but she was, it became clear to Adele, going to have this third baby in her childhood room.

The doctor who had attended her previous births was now somewhere near the western front, practicing a very different sort of medicine.

Mrs. Clemson stockpiled boiled cloths and fretted, “I suppose we’ll have to call Mrs. Maggs.

” Mrs. Maggs tended to the poorer families.

She delivered their babies and nursed their fevers and dosed their ailments with herbs she grew in her garden.

“Mrs. Maggs will do just fine, I’m sure,” said Pauline. Adele didn’t understand how her sister could be so calm about what lay ahead. “Well, I was there for James and John and you,” said Pauline. “I had some idea about what was coming. And after two of my own, I have an even better one.”

Adele had never witnessed a baby being born. Susanna’s mother had had four babies after Susanna, and Susanna reported that she’d screamed loud enough to wake the dead each time. “And the sheets! I had to help Grannie wash the blood out of them, and I thought they’d never come clean again.”

When Pauline’s time came, Adele volunteered to fetch Mrs. Maggs, an errand she hoped would distract her from the ordeal that awaited her sister.

Mrs. Maggs, despite her wrinkles and gray hair, hopped up on the truck seat as if it were something she did every day.

She said nothing about getting to ride in a motor truck, which was disappointing.

Usually, people found it exciting. And their excitement gave Adele the opportunity to talk about the way the engine worked and how she’d tuned it up just the other day to make sure it was in perfect order for this very important errand.

Instead, Mrs. Maggs said, “Perfect weather for a birth. Not too hot, not too cold.”

Adele, who couldn’t see how the weather played into it at all, must have looked doubtful.

“Oh yes. Keeps the mother comfortable. As much as can be anyway. And we won’t have to worry about the baby taking a chill. She’s carrying nice and low—I saw her coming out of church a couple of weeks ago. I always say that’s a good sign.”

Adele, who had volunteered for this errand specifically to escape thinking about Pauline giving birth, realized she’d made a mistake. She gunned the engine. Faster meant a bumpier ride, but one that would end sooner.

“No need to rush,” said Mrs. Maggs. “She’s a bit on the small side, but she’s had two good ones already. I pay attention, you know. She was back in church in no time at all with the first two. That’s a good sign too. But you don’t need me to tell you. Being her sister, you were there, I suppose.”

“No, Mother said I shouldn’t.”

“Hmm. Mothers know best, I suppose, but I would have said different. Take away the mystery, is what I advise. Now you, you’ve got the frame for carrying a baby.

Nice and tall—the baby will have plenty of room.

You won’t be as uncomfortable as some are.

And you look strong. That’s always a good sign.

The ladies who spend time outdoors, who move around a bit, they tend to do better.

Ah, here we are. And here’s your good mama waiting at the door for us. ”

Six hours later, Adele, who, despite the encouragement of Mrs. Maggs, had remained firmly on the other side of the door from Pauline, had a new nephew.

Her sister, who’d done a fair share of yelling for someone who knew what was coming, looked fresh and calm now.

She handed the baby to her father and said, “His name is Jimmy. After James.” Adele’s father quickly passed the infant to Adele and mumbled that he needed to tend to something in the barn.