When Marabel did speak, the words came iron-thin:

“I was seventeen when my father married me to Joseph Quinn. He was thirty-four and rich. Said I was lucky.”

Silas kept the stone moving.

“The first daughter, he frowned. The second, he stopped speaking to me. The third,” her voice frayed, “he called the midwife a witch who’d cursed my womb. Said I was a mule if I could not give him a son. He and his brothers beat me. Then he tied me to that fence and left me for the snow. He called it justice.”

Silas set the knife down and went to her. He took her swollen hand as gently as if it were glass.

“Here,” he said, and the word felt like a post driven into bedrock, “your girls are the only thing worth feeding.”