CHAPTER 34: THE GIRL WHO ASKED FOR A MAP
Mercy became fascinated by the distances separating the towns mentioned in the letters.
She asked Josiah to draw a map large enough for her to see every place her family had lived.
He borrowed paper from the carriage shop and marked the river, the road to Oakwood, and Miriam’s present home.
He explained that their routes were approximate because he had not traveled every mile himself.
Mercy noticed that the journey between mother and children looked small on the page.
“Why did it take so many years?” she asked.
Josiah put down the pencil.
He told her that a road could be open to one traveler and closed to another.
The laws, the money, and the threats mattered as much as the distance.
Mercy ran a finger along the river and asked whether a boat could have carried Miriam back.
Miriam explained that travel papers and the risk of capture had made that route dangerous.
The child grew angry at a world in which people could be stopped from visiting their families.
Ruth did not try to soften the explanation into a comforting fable.
She told Mercy that the adults had endured those restrictions and that many other families still did.
Mercy studied the map for a long time.
Then she drew a small blue circle around the town where Miriam lived.
“Now we know where she is,” Mercy said.
Josiah kept the map in his room.
He began adding towns from the letters Abel sent, with a different mark for every uncertain location.
The paper became crowded with questions rather than answers.
A black dot indicated a confirmed address, while a hollow circle marked a rumor that still needed checking.
Miriam suggested writing dates beside the information because families moved as often as employers changed.
Mercy helped by copying names in careful letters.
She sometimes reversed a character or misspelled a town.
Josiah corrected her gently and explained that good records required patience rather than perfection.
One afternoon she asked why Elias had owned so much land but seemed to know so little about the people who worked it.
Josiah answered that Elias knew exactly how to count the labor he wanted to exploit.
He had chosen not to care about the lives behind those numbers.
Mercy asked whether knowledge without care was a kind of ignorance.
Josiah said he thought it could be.
The answer pleased Miriam, who was listening from the doorway.
She told Mercy that the best questions were often the ones adults found difficult to answer.
