HALLOWELL, MAINE         
APRIL 30, 1778

Ephraim pulled the three large stones from the wagon one at a time and set them on the ground.

It had been raining when we arrived the day before. A soft, warm, spring rain. But still inconvenient given we were sleeping in tents. But now the sun was out, and the children were spread across the clearing, exploring this new place. They ranged in age from Cyrus, almost twenty-two, to Young Ephraim, not quite a month.

“I have been at this a long time,” I told my husband as we stood beside the wagon. I held our baby in the crook of my arm. “I am done.”

“With?”

“Babies. Moving. Upheaval.”

“I am happy to be done,” he said, and kissed my forehead. “Now that I have finally gotten one named after me.”

It took him nine years to convince me to make this move. A patient man is Ephraim Ballard. Our home was in Oxford. Our daughters were there. That was the hardest thing for me to reconcile. Leaving them. I could agree that Ephraim was right about the rest. We needed land and lots of it. And it made perfect sense to put his carpentry skills to use in the lumber trade. But the starting over? The living in tents while he built us another house from the ground up? I wanted no part of that.

Young Ephraim was a surprise. Born seven years after Dolly, he had arrived long after I thought my childbearing efforts complete. It was my pregnancy with him that forced me to relent. We had run out of room and opportunities in Oxford. Our compromise was to bring our daughters with us in spirit.

“Come,” Ephraim said. “Let’s find the right spot for our girls.”

He took the baby from my arms then, and we began a slow stroll across the property. He showed me where he wanted to build the house.

“Big enough that you can have your own workroom,” he said. “Hannah and Dolly can have their own bedroom. As can the boys. But upstairs.”

“That’s a big house.”

“Yes. That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you. It will be big enough to hold us all. And all the children that our children will have one day as well. Big enough for a loud, raucous Christmas.”

We wandered on.

“That’s where I’ll put the barn. And there”—he pointed to the swollen, gurgling creek—“is where I’ll build the mill. Bigger than the barn. Big enough to store entire loads of lumber. And once I’ve got it finished, I’m going to make a pier that stretches out over the water so we can shove the logs directly into the current. Maybe I’ll even have a waterwheel one day as well.”

He had already named it Mill Creek, and, farther on, it spilled into the Kennebec, a fierce and raging river. It was broad and deep, and moved fast with spring rain and snowmelt. But that, he assured me, was exactly what you want in the lumber trade. You must transport the boards, you see. And you needed a river to do it.

Ephraim showed me pastures and gardens and paddocks that didn’t yet exist. A hen house. A kitchen garden. An orchard. The woodlands were there already, of course, as was the pond. But I saw the rest clearly enough as he painted each detail with words. It took an hour, this wandering across the land, and I found that by the end we were both headed in the same direction, toward a huge, ancient live oak that grew at the top of the hill in what Ephraim was already calling the south pasture. Its canopy spread fifty feet at least, and its roots were old and gnarled. Its leaves a fresh and burgeoning green that would provide plentiful shade in summer.

He pointed to the base of the tree. “That’s a fox hole. And that, love, means that we’ll be watched over in this place.”

I nodded but couldn’t speak.

“You are tired.” Ephraim wiped a tear off my cheek with his knuckle. “Sit down and rest.”

He handed the baby to me and strode back to the wagon. One by one he brought the stones and placed them beneath the tree, and when it was done, he settled onto the damp grass beside me.

He reached out and brushed a thumb along my cheek. “I would not wish any companion in the world but you,” he said.

“You’re just full of the Bard today, aren’t you?” I asked. And when he laughed, I quoted a line myself. “For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?”

“For all of your parts. Those inward and out,” he answered, pulling me closer so that he could press a kiss onto my forehead. Together we turned to survey this place where we would build a new life together.

“It feels good to be home,” I said.

And it did.