Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Summer in Emberglen largely happened outside.
The same was true, in a way, for Willow Harbour, but things felt so different that Mira hardly recognised it as summer.
Back in the city, there had been walks in the park or along the canal, cold tea purchased from windows and sipped on the way home after work.
Street markets with stalls and vendors setting up along the curb.
Here, she had none of that. Well, almost none of it.
They’d stopped at the Peckish Pelican, where Emilia served cold apple cider, mead, and sweetened tea out the window, while Matteo was clanging pots and pans in the kitchen and singing off-key along to the radio.
After that though, she and Kayden had made their way down to the village green, where half the town seemed to congregate as soon as the weather permitted – and sometimes even when it didn’t.
They found a spot underneath a tree, near a group of elderly women and one slightly younger man sitting around a picnic table and discussing fibre arts while needles clicked ceaselessly.
As soon as they got comfortable in the grass, Poppy turned to Kayden, tongue sticking sideways out of her mouth.
“Yes, go play!” He gestured to the open space. “Behave!”
With an excited bark, Poppy turned around and raced off to join a group of children playing with a leather ball nearby. Mira watched her seamlessly integrate into the game while the children’s shrieks and laughter drifted across the field.
“She does that a lot, I gather?”
“Whenever I let her. She’s good with children, and they love playing with her.”
“She looks big enough for some of them to ride her around.”
“Oh, they have figured that out, too,” Kayden said dryly. “That’s where she draws the line. She doesn’t mind mud wrestling though.” He sighed. “Unfortunately.”
“Should have gotten a brown dog instead,” Mira teased. Kayden chuckled.
“If only the random litter we found in the shed had been so courteous.”
“A whole litter like Poppy?”
Maybe she had sounded a little terrified there, because Kayden burst into laughter.
“Don’t worry. I begged to keep them, too, but, my grandfather was a sensible man and refused.
The other two went to good homes elsewhere.
I don’t think Emberglen is big enough for three of her, even if the other two had the good sense to stay away from any wood sprites.
” He seemed wistful. “At least I know they both had long, happy lives.”
Mira watched dog and children chase after the ball when it went rolling off after one player’s miscalculation. If anyone had asked her, she’d assumed that Poppy was barely out of adolescence. “Exactly how old is she again?”
“Old enough that she’s been there when my grandfather gave me my first set of tools, and took me out for a treat at the inn after I managed to apply the hammer to my thumb.”
“Huh. All that from a wood sprite?
“They are magical, and I suppose so is Poppy now.” He looked at her sideways. “You know, as much as I enjoy reminiscing about Poppy’s chaotic puppy days, I’d rather talk about you.”
“Me?” Mira repeated, confused. “What about me?”
He nudged her. “You and…?”
Oh, so that was where this was going.
“Me and nothing,” Mira insisted. “We mutually decided not to call it anything yet, and just take our time.”
“Hm.” He turned his cup in his hands. “You’re not just stringing her along, are you?”
“Of course not!” That stung a little. “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know, but-”
“I know about her ex,” Mira said. “She told me. When I… When we first… talked. And no, I don’t have any plans to just up and leave her like he did.”
“Good.” Kayden exhaled sharply. “That’s good.” He looked a little guilty. “I don’t want to assume, I really don’t, I just wanted to make sure. It took her a long time to get over Alexander, I don’t want to watch that happen all over again.”
“And you won’t. Promise.”
If things would ever even go anywhere to begin with. That was still very much up in the air. Who knew, maybe they’d simply decide that they were better off as friends, massively disappointing as that would be.
“So…” Kayden leaned back and took a deep drink. “Ah, that’s the stuff. So I take it the shop is going well enough, then?”
“Better than I expected, if I’m being honest.” Mira tapped an erratic rhythm on her cup. “I really thought the whole thing would crash and burn around me.”
“Ah, come on. Just because you never made a potion before and had no experience running a shop by yourself.”
“I’m sure that’s exactly what Uncle Lochlin thought when he wrote that letter.”
“What letter?”
Mira felt her cheeks turn red. Right. She’d never actually told anyone exactly why she had made this slightly insane decision in the first place.
“So… after I’d signed the papers and gotten the house, the solicitor gave me this envelope…”
“When she was done recounting the somewhat bizarre sequence of events that had led to her opening a potion shop in a town she’d only ever been to as a child, with no formal training whatsoever, Kayden looked like he was trying hard not to laugh.
“He really did that. And you thought ‘sure, what could possibly go wrong’?”
“Something like that,” Mira muttered. “Listen, it was an opportunity, my boss made my job a miserable experience, and I figured I might as well give it a try, seeing as I had the house and the shop anyway.”
Kayden raised his hands. “I didn’t judge! Just. It’s a little unusual, you have to admit. Normally these things are discussed beforehand.”
“Believe me, I know.”
And maybe Uncle Lochlin would have liked that, too. But things had played out the way they had, and they’d both done the best they could.
Kayden leaned back on his elbows. “No regrets though?”
“Only a little bit. I ruined two blouses when I had potions explode on me,” Mira groused. Now Kayden did laugh.
“Oh no, not the blouses!”
“Don’t you mock me!” Mira elbowed him in the side. “They were very nice blouses.”
“Who wears nice clothes inside a potion workshop?”
Mira rolled her eyes. “Someone who has never made a potion in her life, that’s who.”
“Right. That.”
They sat in companionable silence for a while.
Poppy, panting, left the children to their own devices and came to slobber up some water from a bowl and then nap at Kayden’s feet like the world’s lumpiest shag carpet.
Hamish and Clara stopped to say hello for a minute, and the Atas’ children bounded up to them, asking to pet Poppy, who graciously allowed it before the three returned to their harried-looking mother.
The green was busy this time of day, it was loud, and right now, there was nowhere else that Mira would rather be.
“I’m glad he did that,” she said abruptly.
“Write me that letter,” she clarified upon Kayden’s puzzled look.
“I still don’t know what Uncle Lochlin was thinking, but I know he really believed in me.
If he hadn’t…” She plucked a blade of grass and slowly tore it into tiny pieces.
“I was pretty miserable at the emporium. I didn’t see it that way at the time, but looking back now, I don’t know how much longer I would’ve lasted.
I probably would have quit sooner or later anyway, but this way, I had an alternative, rather than just storming out in a huff.
Who knows where that would have gotten me.
I might have ended up somewhere even worse. ”
“Good man, your uncle.” Kayden picked his cup back up and held it out in front of them. “To distant relatives with an abundance of confidence.”
Chuckling, Mira knocked her cup against his. “And to doing things even when you have no idea how they even work.”
They drank to it. When Mira put down her cup, the ball rolled past and Poppy got up for another round of ‘bowl over the tiny children’.
Mira silently thanked Uncle Lochlin once again as she watched her run off, accompanied by squealing children.
However strange it all may have been, however much she still had to learn, she knew one thing now.
However things would turn out, she was proud to call Emberglen her home.
After a day spent outside, Mira was glad to return to said home at dinner time.
After collecting the day’s mail and dropping her purse on the brand-new chair in the hallway – serving as sideboard and coat rack until she could afford both of those – Mira trudged into the bathroom to draw herself a sorely needed bath.
She was still lacking a firestone, but in the warm summer weather, a bath at room temperature wasn’t quite as bad as it had been in the spring chill.
Then, she had limited herself to sponge baths in the sink more often than not, and only bit the bullet when her hair had needed washing.
Now, she would be drawing herself a bath, if any water would come out of the pipes at all.
After a good dozen pumps, which usually had it flowing nicely, there was absolutely nothing.
Frowning, and frankly a little concerned, Mira kept pumping.
When she leaned in to listen, she heard a faint gurgling in the pipes.
Finally, after way too much time spent cranking the old pump, the tap sputtered and began spouting water.
Well, trickling. And after another solid minute of effort, a trickle was still all that Mira was getting.
“Oh, rats.”
Mira abandoned her effort and hurried to the kitchen to try the pump over the sink. The results were much the same – too much pumping, and a sad little trickle of water into the basin. Groaning, Mira sank into a chair. That wasn’t good.
There was no way Eren’s problem had anything to do with the pump.
If her house was affected, so close to the spring, something was wrong with it, and by extension the groundwater reservoirs that it was feeding into.
Was that why those alleged tourists kept going to the spring?
Was Golden River sending employees to try and ascertain whether it made sense to expand operations in the area?
If that was it, maybe Mayor Lloyd should look into it sooner rather than later, because if Golden River saw an issue that would prevent them from making money, that might just be everyone’s problem very soon.
A problem for another day though, Mira decided.
Today, it was getting late, and she was very much done.
She’d just file away her mail, which these days mostly consisted of advertising from wherever she ordered her supplies, and the occasional letter from home.
Today, that was a letter from Rue, which Mira put aside to read after dinner, and something from…
a bank? Not her bank, and it was addressed to-
“Uncle Lochlin?”
With a sinking feeling, Mira opened the envelope. She’d thought his accounts had been closed. Did someone fumble the process and saddle her with fees?
Urgent notice.
Oh, that didn’t sound good. Mira quickly scanned down the page. When her eyes caught on an absurdly large number, she jumped back up to read with more care. What was going on?
On the first read, Mira lost her appetite. The second time, she started to feel ill. The third time, she put it down halfway through and stared at the wall.
Debt. This was a late notice for Uncle Lochlin’s loan payments – a loan he’d taken out for the shop.
Cursing, Mira jumped out of her seat and hurried to retrieve the papers she’d gotten from Mr. Bowen what felt like an eternity ago.
She sat back down and began rifling through the stack.
She’d read them. Mostly. Some, she had skimmed, but she had looked at them all, at least. She couldn’t possibly have missed this.
In the middle of the stack, she found it.
It looked just like everything else, with nothing to make it stand out as something she needed to pay special attention to.
A very polite note informing her of the debt against Mr. Archer’s business, which would pass into her name upon her acceptance of the inheritance.
Loan amount, monthly rate, interest, remaining balance – all listed neatly, mocking her and her air-headed stupidity.
How could she have missed this?
Turmoil in her stomach and a bead of sweat forming at the base of her neck, Mira stared at the papers, the note and the letter.
Willed the numbers to change, the decimal point to move, anything.
Because right now, the reality of it was crushing her, a sudden weight on her that made breathing difficult.
She hadn’t known. Somehow, she had been dumb enough to miss this, and now the late notice was staring her in the face like an open maw.
Between the missed payments and the late fees, she’d be lucky to have a penny left in her account after paying that.
And then what? Go back home after all, and lose everything she’d allowed herself to hope she could have?
She couldn’t. Not now, not when she was starting to feel so at home here.
The mere idea of losing that sent a sob up of her burning throat.
Tears welling up, Mira put her head down on her folded arms. This was it. She’d missed this when she absolutely shouldn’t have, and now her own negligence would be a knife in her back. She’d have to sort this out, somehow. But damned if she knew how.