Every plate number. Every call time. Every disturbance. Every package with no return address. Every vehicle that slowed too long at the road.
My binders multiplied.
Helena called them my war library.
She was not entirely wrong.
By spring, Patricia House had seven women and three children in residence. The garden was expanded. The greenhouse was repaired properly. The chicken coop, which had stood empty for years, filled again. I started using the old upstairs bedroom at the farmhouse as my own and slowly moved the last boxes from the Millbrook apartment out to the farm for good. I no longer thought of myself as visiting George’s secret. I lived there. I ran it. I fought for it. I belonged to it in the way responsibility creates belonging.
That was when we had our first public fundraiser.
I hated every minute leading up to it and almost all of it while it was happening.