It was also, Fox knew, about eating, and making enough food and money to feed a family of six-and whoever dropped by. Which was why his dad and his older sister, Sage, were down at their stand selling fresh eggs, goat’s milk, honey, and his mother’s homemade jams.

He glanced over to where his younger brother, Ridge, was stretched out between the rows playing with the weeds instead of yanking them. And because his mother was inside putting their baby sister, Sparrow, down for her nap, he was on Ridge duty.

“Come on, Ridge, pull the stupid things. I wanna go.”

Ridge lifted his face, turned his I’m-dreaming eyes on his brother. “Why can’t I go with you?”

“Because you’re eight and you can’t even weed the dumb tomatoes.” Annoyed, Fox stepped over the rows to Ridge’s section and, crouching, began to yank.

“Can, too.”

As Fox hoped, the insult had Ridge weeding with a vengeance. Fox straightened, rubbed his hands on his jeans. He was a tall boy with a skinny build, a mass of bark brown hair worn in a waving tangle around a sharp-boned face. His eyes were tawny and reflected his satisfaction now as he trooped over for the sprayer.

He dumped it beside Ridge. “Don’t forget to spray this shit.”

He crossed the yard, circling what was left-three short walls and part of a chimney-of the old stone hut on the edge of the vegetable garden. It was buried, as his mother liked it best, in honeysuckle and wild morning glory.

He skirted past the chicken coop and the cluckers that were pecking around, by the goat yard where the two nannies stood slack-hipped and bored, edged around his mother’s herb garden. He headed toward the kitchen door of the house his parents had mostly built. The kitchen was big, and the counters loaded with projects-canning jars, lids, tubs of candle wax, bowls of wicks.