Well before dawn, Heath rose silently from his bed. He kissed Rivka, sleeping peacefully in a halo of tousled dark hair. She smiled without fully waking, and he left a note for her on the bedside table before he slipped out the door. A few minutes later, he was riding Charger north, picking his way carefully through the fog that had gathered overnight.

He skirted around Hannah's cabin, resisting the urge to step in quietly and stoke her wood stove so it would be hot when she woke. She had already warned him off, knowing he'd be up and around early on this day.

"Don't you come in, you'll just wake me, and I don't want you using so much firewood so early in the winter. I'll be nice and cozy in my bed until it's time to get up."

He continued on up the rise and into the grove, where Jarrod had left the buckboard the day before. Heath had made sure the tools he needed were stowed in the back of the wagon yesterday as well, so he wouldn't have to make a lot of noise riding out with them this morning. He dismounted, removed Charger's tack and stowed it in the wagon, then haltered him with a long lead line so he could graze nearby while Heath worked.

The fog drifted in and around the grove, muffling the ambient noise but amplifying every crunch of the gravel under his boot and every scrape of his tools along the floor of the wagon. Glancing in the buckboard, he felt a tightening of his throat, and decided not to uncover the stones just yet. He would start with digging out the two sites he and Hannah had marked. He gathered a pickaxe, a shovel, a pry bar, and a mattock for shaping the sides of the hole; then he lit the lantern hanging beside the driver's box and raised it above eye level, the yellow glow illuminating and reflecting off the drifting mist around him.

Taking a deep breath, he tried to assess the state of the weather inside his head. He wanted to keep this task peaceful and simple. He wanted to stay focused on what it was he was doing. His head, though – well, to be plain about it, he had become so skittish and unpredictably spooky, he could easily see how the task at hand could spin him off sideways. Gravestones, digging, fog – this was truly starting to look like a very bad idea.

Maybe I should have gotten at least my brothers out here to help me do this, Heath thought, still standing by the buckboard.

"Yes, you definitely should have, Brother Heath," said Jarrod.

Heath jumped, losing his grip on the pickaxe and narrowly missing dropping it on his foot. He spun to see his brother riding out of the fog into the circle of lamplight. Heath wondered, and not for the first time this week, how it was that Jarrod seemed to know what he was thinking. "Dammit, Jarrod –"

"Sorry. I suppose I should have given you some warning."

"That would have been the polite thing to do. What are you doing here?"

"You've done this task once on your own, Heath. No way am I letting that happen again."

Heath was dumbstruck. "But –" He turned, hearing the sound of wagon wheels approaching.

"And by the way, there are several more people coming."

Familiar voices now carried to him through the fog. Heath was confused. He was expecting Hannah to join him here later, and Silas and Rivka had planned to come up after breakfast. Even on the heels of their trip to Strawberry, it still had never occurred to Heath that this task was something in which the Barkleys should - or would want to - participate.

While Heath was still fumbling over how to think about this turn of events, another buckboard appeared, driven by Nick and carrying the rest of the household.

"Well, that was fun, rousting an entire houseful of people to run out into the fog to catch up with you, Heath," Nick hailed loudly. "Y'know, you could've planned to do this in a few hours, in daylight, when people are mostly awake. Or are you trying for this ghost story, Halloween kind of feeling?"

Nick's words tumbled and bounced around him, but Heath wasn't really listening to what he was saying. He just stood there with the lantern in one hand and half his tools in the other, at a loss how to respond.

John and Victoria shared a look, and then John hopped down from the wagon and walked over to Heath. He took the lantern from his hand, handing it to Jarrod, and then gathered the tools and leaned them against the wagon wheel. He put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"Heath," he said, "no worries. You're here to set these headstones for your Mama and your Aunt Rachael. If it's ok with you, we're here to stand with you and Hannah and help you with that. That's all. We never had the chance to know Leah and Rachael, but we know you. And so this gives us a chance to honor these two women who raised up the young man we love so much."

Just as during their talk on the trail up to Strawberry, John's simple explanation was as surprising as it was illuminating; Heath found himself speechless again as he considered the Marshal's words. He realized the degree to which he still kept his Barkley life and his Thomson life in two carefully separated boxes. But what John had said pointed to something that went very deep, and Heath had a feeling it was going to take him a while to think it through.

All his life, Heath had been the reason for his mother's exile; because of his birth, his mother was ostracized, and because he continued to exist - because she loved him - her punishment continued until the day she died. Rachael, too, was doubly exiled; first, for loving Leah, and second, for loving Leah's bastard son. Hannah, who mothered them all, in some ways drew the least explicit hostility, because she was a Negro woman, and thus invisible, or considered of no account to the white folks.

And so, all his life, Heath had cherished them, but held them protectively close to his heart. It was a rare person in his life who could see and understand the whole of Heath's family. Frank was one of those, and Rivka and Hadassah. Standing now in this place, he wondered: how is it possible that he, whose very existence brought such hardship upon his family, could suddenly become a bridge, the means by which their memory would be honored by this Barkley family, by the one family who actually had any reason at all to be angry at Leah? How was that possible?

Heath looked at Victoria, who was smiling gently at him, and he realized the depth to which he believed himself to be a curse upon his mother's life, no matter how much she told him otherwise. He wondered if he could learn to change that belief. He shook his head with a bemused smile, and admitted to himself that, mystified and confused as he was, still he was very, very glad they had come to help and to stand with him and Hannah while they remembered their Leah and their Rachael. He looked at the faces around him, and then looked up at John and nodded.

"So," John said, "how about you show us where the digging needs to be done, and then your brothers and I will do the heavy lifting. Victoria and Audra have some things to plant, Silas brought food, Hannah will be with you, and Rivka brought - rocks?"

"It's a Jewish thing," she said, coming over to stand by Heath. "I'll explain later."

Not long after the foggy sunrise, the headstones had been set in and levelled, Audra had planted some perennials around the stones, and then she and Victoria planted a cherry tree on either side of the paired markers. Hannah and Silas sang some favorite hymns, and Rivka sang a blessing for the dead in Hebrew and placed a perfect, smooth river rock on top of each headstone, one black, one white. She told John that leaving such a token at a grave was an ancient Jewish tradition. "There are many explanations that can be offered, but my father always said that while flowers remind us of the fleeting fragile beauty of life, a stone speaks of the endurance of memory and love, and so we always leave one when we visit a grave."

After they all shared some coffee and breakfast, the group began to sort themselves out to move on with the day. Heath and Rivka climbed bareback onto Charger; he was taking her up to visit the hill where he had envisioned their home. Silas and Nick packed up their wagon and prepared to cart everyone back to the house.

Jarrod retrieved Jingo and got his saddle back on. He lingered by the markers for a long while after his family had left, his expression sad. He was lost in the memory of the vision of these two women that had come to him up in Strawberry.

Did you know how little time you would have to mother this boy before he was off on his own into the world? Before the war would take him away at the age of thirteen? Could you feel how quickly that future would come upon you, so you had to pour all your love and teaching and warnings and scolding and laughter into so brief a time?

"Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all," he said softly. "Leah, Rachael, thank you."

He heard a quiet step behind him.

"You have a bit of the Sight, don't you, brother Jarrod?"

"I don't know about that, Hannah," he said, smiling, his eyes still on the headstones. "It's funny, though. I can see them, in my memory, as if I knew them. I feel the loss, as if I'd known them all my life."

She came to his side and slipped her arm through his. "Perhaps in a way you have." She smiled up at him. "You did good with Heath yesterday. He needs reminding these days to keep his eyes on the prize. The past has its teeth in him now, more than it ever did, and might be it won't ever stop yankin' on him like it does. But you did good turnin' his eyes back to the path he's on."

"I hope so, Hannah."

"C'mon, sing with me while you walk me back to my house."

Got my hands on the gospel plow

Wouldn't take nothin for my journey now

Keep your eyes on the prize

Hold on

Hold on

The sound of the joyous, rhythmic song drifted up from the grove, following them as Heath allowed Charger to pick his own path and his own pace to the summit of the hill. He smiled, feeling the weight on his heart lifting just a bit, and he took a deep breath.

Keep your eye on the prize, hold on

Hold on

Rivka sighed contentedly as she rested her cheek against the back of Heath's shoulder, enjoying the feeling of his warmth against her body as she rode behind him. It was midmorning now, and the late-rising sun had chased off most of the ground clouds. Pockets of fog still remained in low and shadowed areas, but as the big bay horse ambled to the top of the rise, the view became expansive, and the mists gleamed white in the sun, an artful decoration enhancing the beauty of the landscape.

"This is the spot."

"Heath, it is beautiful. Beautiful. I know next to nothing about building houses, so I'll have to trust your judgement on things like water and construction and foundations and such, but as a place to be with you, no question, it is perfect." She tightened her arms around his waist and leaned forward to kiss his cheek, then laughed as Charger tossed his head and danced a bit on the summit of the hill.

How like a winter hath my absence been from thee, my love, she thought. Rivka had found the sonnet on her bedside table when she rose early that morning, weighted down by a small bouquet of asters and a petite, perfect apple fresh from the orchard. The poem had been written out in Heath's fluid, slanting cursive. The grace of his handwriting surprised and amused her, back when they were still children. He always accepted her teasing with equanimity, but his Aunt Rachel had taught him that being able to write well could open doors for him when he had to go out in the world and work, just like having good manners, and she had insisted he learn both.

This morning, he had clearly taken extra care with his penmanship, the black ink flowing over a lovely heavy piece of cream-colored stationary she suspected was donated from Audra's writing desk. He had risen well before sunrise to ride out to the grove by the cabin to prepare the area where they would place the headstones. The words of the sonnet made her heart ache with past sadness and with the joy of being able to hold him in her arms again.

It had stirred some worry in her as well, to be honest. She was aware of the depth to which Heath's confidence in himself had been shaken by the events of the summer. The verse – while loving and complimentary - still hinted at a man separated from his own ability to find joy and beauty in the world around him. This was not the Heath she knew, and she sensed both love and fear behind his choice of words.

Eight months they were together in Carterson; she was twelve, he was fifteen. After the camp's liberation in 1865, he had lived mostly as an itinerant cowboy, while she came to womanhood in her family's home in Albuquerque. Over the ten years they had known each other, through letters and visits, their connection had grown and strengthened, despite the fact that they were separated far more than they were together. They became lovers on the eve of her departure to study medicine in Philadelphia.

Four years passed, and still they wrote. Their letters reached across thousands of miles; written with love and humor and honesty, they helped each other along: she, navigating the uncharted and often hostile and lonely waters of a woman in medicine; he, working and supporting his family in Strawberry; and then making his way through these tumultuous past two years that saw the death of Leah and Rachael, and Heath's entry into this Barkley family. Rivka was well aware of how much he had relied on her, as well as her mother, for his support and sounding board through those times. She and her mother had been worried for him after Rachael's death; they could sense the same brittleness that Hannah had perceived, and, like her, they had not seen a way to draw him out of his self-imposed exile.

When she came to him in Nevada, Rivka could easily see the shame and grief he felt, reuniting with her under such dire circumstances. Imprisoned in the present, he felt trapped in the past, and his desire to insulate her from that threat was palpable. Those fears had eased, and she believed that Heath had come a long way just in the past weeks toward setting aside the burden of guilt and failure with which he had condemned himself. He was allowing himself now to begin to come home, really come home – but now, the crisis over, the monumental task of putting himself back together was looming large. Heath was beginning to realize that he might not, in fact, recover - at least not fully. Not in his mind, nor in his body.

Rivka could hear the questions murmuring and rattling in the background with almost everything he did: he was constantly testing, constantly wondering - is this as good as it's going to get? Many things continued to improve, but every time he encountered a setback - a relapse of pain, for example, or the hallucinatory intrusion of memories, or even difficulty with a simple task for which he didn't yet have the strength - those questions carried their own kind of grief, and anger, and fear. Heath feared, Rivka knew, that he would drown without her; even more, he feared that he wouldn't ever recover enough to rightly ask her to join her life with his.

They had talked for hours after the lunchtime picnic at Hannah's cabin. They had settled a few topics under debate. Rivka laid out her list of non-negotiable assumptions that must be stipulated to before any other discussion, as follows: First: She intended to become Heath's wife. Second: Heath was to set aside any ideas that he was unsuitable, unworthy, or otherwise too impaired to become her husband. Failure to drop that notion would earn him a serious talking-to, and would not in any way alter the fact of her first stipulation.

(Regarding the first stipulation, she felt the wedding should take place in October of the coming year. At that time she will have completed her year of training in San Francisco, and her family could travel up from San Diego, after the High Holy Days in September. Those details they could work out later.)

Third: She thought the building of a home for them on a hilltop sounded perfect, and she wondered if it could be done by next October.

Fourth: There was absolutely no way Heath was going on a quest after two missing violinists without her. She'd been cooped up in the city for weeks, and heading out on the trail with Heath and John and Audra sounded like heaven. She'd already wired Lotte (Dr. Charlotte Blake Brown, her supervisor and one of the founders of the Pacific Dispensary) in San Francisco and offered to cover the Christmas holiday at the hospital in exchange for postponing her return from Stockton.

Heath, for his part, found his head spinning a bit, and couldn't come up with much in the way of stipulations of his own. He was surprised and frankly overjoyed that Rivka would join them on the trail to Sonora.

He agreed to marry her wherever and whenever she so desired; he would marry her over and over again if that's what she wanted.

As far as his own state of health, Heath solemnly agreed to do his best to have faith and have patience with himself as he labored through the process of putting himself back together; but at absolute minimum he promised to be honest about it, to her, and to himself.

And yes, he could build her a house by next October. Absolutely. Yes. He could build a home for the two of them and the family they hoped to have. He felt as sure of it right then as he'd felt about anything in his life. The thought steadied him, gave him a feeling of peace he'd not felt for a very long time. It beckoned him, as a trailmarker that drew his sight on and up to the path forward; he looked into Rivka's eyes and heard voices singing home.