Chapter 17
MARIS
The square outside the bakery window is full of people who are not coming in.
I watch them from behind the counter for about an hour before I accept what I'm seeing.
They pass, they glance, some of them slow — and then they find somewhere else to be.
A woman I've sold bread to for two years crosses to the opposite side of the lane without breaking stride.
Two men from the mill stop outside, exchange words I can't hear, and move on without trying the door.
By mid-morning I've had zero customers.
I could stand here and watch the empty street, or I could do something with the time.
I pull the rocking chair from the back room, carry it out to the stoop, and set it facing the square.
Then I go back for my crochet basket, the half-finished top I've been working on for Elin, and the small blanket I use to drape over my lap when the mornings are cool. I settle in and start working the hook through the yarn. This is our home, and I won’t be scared off.
Let them look. I'm not hiding.
Elin sets herself up on the step below me with a collection of pebbles she's been sorting into categories I haven't been able to identify.
She narrates the process to herself in the low, continuous murmur she uses for solitary work.
The morning sun hits the square at a good angle and the yarn in my lap glows warm reddish-brown.
Two women across the square notice me. I keep working. The hook moves in and out of the loop, smooth and regular. I know this pattern well enough to do it without looking.
It's not the worst morning I've had. My savings are adequate for several weeks if I'm careful.
And once Kaedrin closes his investigation, once there's an actual explanation for the livestock deaths that doesn't involve my daughter, the foot traffic will come back.
It will take time, and I'll have to manage Brennor and Dora and the rest of them with more patience than I currently feel, but it will come back.
Brindle Hollow doesn't have another bakery.
I tell myself this while I crochet and watch the empty square and listen to Elin sorting her pebbles, and I almost believe it.
The sound reaches me before I see them. A cluster of children, seven or eight of them, coming down the lane at the loose-jointed run of a group that has decided on a direction without quite deciding on a purpose.
They range from roughly five to ten — half of them faces I recognize from families who have bought bread here for years.
They slow when they see Elin.
She looks up from her pebbles. She gives them the same frank, assessing look she gives everything new and waits to see what they want.
The oldest boy bends down and picks something up off the lane. He throws it before I've processed what he's doing.
The rock hits the step six inches from Elin's hand. She flinches back. A second one follows, and a third, none of them close enough to connect but close enough to mean it, and then several voices at once.
"Cursed." The word comes out ugly from the oldest boy's mouth. "Cursed monster." The others pick it up in the way children echo things they've heard adults say without understanding the weight.
I'm off the chair and across the stoop before the crochet basket hits the ground.
"Go home." I put myself between Elin and the street, my voice coming out flat and hard. "All of you. Now."
The oldest boy holds his ground for a moment, the way ten-year-olds do when they're performing bravery for an audience. I take one step toward him and he decides against it. They scatter up the lane in a loose, noisy retreat.
I turn around. Elin is pressed against the bakery door, both hands over her face, her pebbles scattered across the stoop. Her shoulders are shaking.
I pick her up. She wraps around me immediately, her face against my neck, and the sounds she makes are small and muffled and tear something open in my chest that doesn't have a name.
"I've got you." I carry her inside and bolt the door behind us. "I've got you. Those children were wrong. They were unkind and they were wrong."
She pulls back enough to look at me. Her eyes are red and her lower lip is wobbling. "Why did they throw rocks?"
"Because they're scared of things they don't understand." I brush her curls from her face. "And people who are scared sometimes do unkind things."
"Am I a monster?"
"No." I say it before the question finishes. "You are the most important person in my world. You are funny and brave and very good at sorting pebbles, and those children don't know the first thing about you."
Her eyes linger on me longer than necessary, deciding whether to believe this.
"Pip would be mad," she says finally, voice still thick.
"Pip would be furious," I agree. "Rightfully."
She nods, solemn, and presses her face back against my shoulder.
I hold her and study the bolted door and the empty square beyond the window glass, and I let the truth of the morning settle where it needs to settle. My savings will carry us for a few weeks. The foot traffic might come back. The situation might resolve.
And none of that changes what just happened on my own front stoop.
I press my lips to her head and keep holding her and don't let myself think too far ahead, because right now all there is to do is this.