Chapter 37
Penny
Ihad not missed farmwork.
Kit’s company made it more tolerable, and it was nice to see the property coming alive under our efforts.
Warren and his family proved to be competent workers, making possible what hadn’t been since Father fell ill.
More than once, I found myself wanting to tell him.
To run to his and Mother’s room at the end of each day and describe our progress.
I imagined he would have been proud.
I also imagined he would have liked Kit.
Mother I was less sure of. She rejoined us for meals but didn’t say much. Nothing to me. Her silence hurt. Father’s absence hurt. Merrick’s betrayal… hurt.
So, I buried myself in my responsibilities.
It might have been the most actual labor I’d done on the farm. Kit kept me on task, and by the end of each day, I was too exhausted to do much besides fill my belly then tumble into bed before the next morning started the process over again.
By the sixth day, Mother had remained steadfast in her avoidance, and I’d had enough. After breakfast, she fled to her bedroom while Sayla washed dishes, and Kit and the other men prepared to venture back out into the fields.
At the dining table, I caught Kit’s sleeve as he was pushing his chair in. His dark eyes met mine with a question I was all too ready to answer.
“I’m going to talk to her.” I tipped my head toward the hallway.
“Do you want me to come with you?” he asked.
“No.”
I would have liked to think it was because, if I was man enough to take responsibility for this property and my family’s wellbeing, I was man enough to confront my own mother. But really, I was more afraid of what she might say about Kit. Disparagement he was better off not hearing.
Kit nodded, then tugged me in for a chaste kiss. “I’ll be in the fields if you need me.”
I forced a smile and headed for my mother’s room before my conviction failed.
Walking to the back of the house, my footsteps echoed my heart’s stuttering rhythm. I arrived before Mother’s closed door and raised my fist to knock, then paused before I could.
Was I prepared for this? I’d considered all the worsts.
She could disown me. Cast me out as a criminal and revoke my right to this farm and this family.
She could report me or Kit. See us hanged for our transgressions.
I could only hope that her choice to simply ignore us was its own offering of peace.
She didn’t want to ruin me, just like I didn’t mean to ruin… everything.
The house was rarely quiet, but she had managed to make her absence loud. It hung heavily on me now, oppressive and dark.
I sucked a steeling breath and knocked.
“Mother?” My voice sounded faint, like it wanted to be as far from this as I did. “May I have a word with you?”
After a few moments, her response came muffled through the door. “I don’t think so, Penny. I’m not feeling well.”
My face twisted in a frown. I stared at the door, eyes tracing the grain of the wood where it swirled and stretched. I’d come this far. I’d given her days, and this was hard for me, too. So hard that I didn’t trust myself to return if I left now.
“If you’re too unwell to talk,” I began, “perhaps you can just listen?”
She gave no answer to that, so I puffed out a sigh and turned to put my back against the wall beside the door.
I leaned heavily and watched the wood as if I could see her face in it.
I watched the knob, too, hoping it would turn, while I struggled to express the things that had plagued my thoughts for days.
“It’s all right if you’re upset with me.
Angry, even disappointed. Maybe you should be.
I know I lied to you. And I left you so soon after Father died.
You might have needed me.” Like I needed her now.
I’d spent so many months in Ashpoint missing this place and the people in it.
Having them apart from me even after I’d returned made my heart ache.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen this way. I didn’t mean to stay away and abandon you in your grief. I didn’t mean to fail at bringing Father home…” Clammy heat rushed my face. “I didn’t even mean to fall in love…”
My throat was thick, and I swallowed, drawing from wells of courage that were so near dry I was surprised there was anything left.
I couldn’t be sure she was listening or that she cared.
All my truths could have been dismissed as excuses.
She might have thought it unforgivable. That her son had become a stranger, a wicked thing haunting her home.
Still pressed against the wall, I slid down to sitting with my knees up and my arms draped atop them.
“But I did.” The confession escaped as a murmur. “I did all those things. And I think… I think it’s going to be okay.”
The door creaked open and startled me. Mother must have been as close to her side as I was to mine, waiting for me to say the right thing. Or the wrong one.
Her caramel brown eyes shimmered with moisture. “How do you know that?” she asked, her voice faint.
I stood, afraid to reach for her but wanting her close. This moment of acknowledgment was the most I’d had in days, and I was desperate for more. A bit of hope that she wasn’t done with me. That I was still welcome and wanted here.
“Can we, um…” I dragged my sleeve over my face to catch the tears preparing to fall. “Can we go for a walk?”
I offered my arm but didn’t breathe until she took it. She held my elbow and let me lead her through the house and out the back door.
Outside, spring had settled over the farm.
Mornings were misty, but the rain of our first day here had stayed gone, leaving sunshine and a crisp breeze as pleasant working conditions.
I wasn’t sure if Mother had yet seen all we’d accomplished, but it was plainly before her now.
Fields were tilled, livestock tended, and seed ready to sow.
Kit was right. It could be a banner year.
I didn’t say much as we walked the property.
A mention here of our plans for the previously fallow fields, a nod toward Warren and how enthusiastically he’d taken to every task.
He said he wanted to impress my sister, but having Mother’s approval couldn’t hurt.
Though, from the way she smiled when she gazed across the acreage at her future son-in-law, it seemed that was a battle Warren had already won.
Kit, on the other hand, had not yet fallen into those good graces.
He’d been focused on consoling me and keeping the long days of plowing from driving me to madness, but I knew he was bothered by it all.
I’d told him this would be his family and his home.
Seeing him turned away from it was a slow form of torture.
“Kit’s been invaluable,” I said, trying and failing to sound casual. “I couldn’t have done this without him.”
My meaning and sweeping gesture were for the farm. The land where she’d made her home. Her livelihood. But the way her expression darkened made it clear her thoughts were elsewhere.
“No, I suppose you couldn’t have.” She pulled her arm free to fold across her chest. “My boy would never…”
My gaze snapped over sharply, and she sighed.
“You wouldn’t, Pen. And if those horrible claims had come from any other source, I wouldn’t have believed them. Do you know how badly I want to deny it? To defend you? My son is no criminal, no cultist.”
“Mother, we’re helping them. The people in Ashpoint aren’t bad, just misled. I’m not bad… And Kit…” I glanced back to see my intended walking dutifully behind the plow, taking care of responsibilities that were rightfully mine.
It wasn’t enough. Insisting on positive intentions, assuring her how desperately I loved the man who had spent the past half year caring for me, telling her she was wrong in her assumptions about the Bone Men and in my purpose there…
I’d relied on Sayla’s account until now, and had been relieved to be spared confessing to my mother the things I never wanted her to know.
But she needed to hear it—all of it—from me.
“Do you know why I went there?” I asked.
Mother winced as though she, too, would rather have avoided this, but if I was tired of being ignored, then I needed to let her see me.
“Your father,” Mother replied softly.
I nodded and ventured ahead. “To steal his body back. To lay him to rest. I knew you feared the curse—”
“Feared it?” Mother’s voice jumped to a higher pitch. “It’s upon us even now, Penwell!”
That drew me up short, almost scoffing as I glanced at the verdant earth around us. “How is this a curse?”
But when I looked at my mother, her lip wobbled, and tears scattered from her lashes. “Don’t you see?” she murmured. “It’s trying to take you from me.”
My heart clenched with sorrowful relief as I turned toward her and took her hands in mine.
“No.” I shook my head. “No curse would take me from you, Mother, and I don’t believe…”
Starting that conversation caused her expression to harden, but I couldn’t leave it lie.
“They’re wrong about Eeus,” I said. “They’ve turned him into something wicked, and I’ve seen…
I’ve learned better, Mother. They can learn better, too.
When I found out Father’s body was lost, I thought I was staying there to destroy everything.
Or to prove something to Merrick. But so many of the people just want to belong. They don’t have what we do.”
Again, I gestured to the fields cast in beams of golden sun. The people in Ashpoint had made their homes there. It was the community they sought, and it deserved to be preserved.
“But they can,” I insisted. “They want to legitimize. To change. And Kit and I are helping with that. We’re saving them, Mother.”