"In my letters. In the one in August, when I said yes to the fare. I said my brother-in-law had given his blessing. He didn't. He doesn't know where I am. I climbed out of the attic window at four in the morning with my mother's bag and walked to the depot so I wouldn't have to see him at breakfast. I left my sister a note in the type case under the lowercase e, because she's the only one who ever cleans that box." She heard her voice shake and let it. "I lied because I was ashamed. It's not the same as what you did. But I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm a person who has never told a lie in a letter, Keziah, because I am, and you'd know it, and it would be one more thing that wasn't honest at this table."
Keziah stared at her. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed, a small cracked sound that turned into a hiccup. "The lowercase e," she said. "That's the one with the most in it."
"It is."
"So she'd find it fastest."
"Yes."
Nehemiah took his hand away from his eyes. They were red, and he did not seem to care that anybody saw.
"Kez," he said. "Why didn't you tell me? Any of it. The letters. Any time since spring."
The girl looked at him for a long moment, and Linnet saw her decide to say the true thing instead of the kind one.
"Because you didn't ask me anything," Keziah said. "Not since April. You didn't ask me how I was, or what I did all day, or if I was sad. You asked me if there was coffee. You told me about the druggist like you were telling me the price of hay. I thought you'd decided I was something to get settled, like the brand inspection. So I settled it myself."