When they'd buried Lizy, Lucas and his father had worked together in stunned silence, afraid to think about, much less speak about, the mysterious way in which the sickness could sweep through a household taking one family member after another. Soon after, Lucas's sister Lizy, just four years old, had fallen to the same dread disease. Asa had died of consumption two years before. Next were the stones marking the place where Lucas's Uncle Asa was buried. Their graves were so small that the fieldstones stuck in the ground to mark their heads and feet were no farther apart than the length of Lucas's arm. There were the graves of two infants, his brother and sister, each of whom had died so soon after birth that Lucas could scarcely remember anything about them except the sight of their tiny, red fists waving in the air and the sound of their feeble crying. He stared blindly at the double line of grave markers in the little family burial ground. All that was left was to lower the pine box into the cold, hard ground and cover it with dirt.īut Lucas didn't move. Then he stood up to straighten his tired back. Carefully, Lucas Whitaker hammered small metal tacks into the top of the coffin lid to form his mother's initials: H.W., for Hannah Whitaker.
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