Chapter 39
Penny
The end of the planting season drew near. Warren and his family had provided the help we desperately needed, but it left me wondering what we would do in the future. We couldn’t afford to hire hands, and we couldn’t count on the charity of others indefinitely. It was a problem, and not my only one.
Soon, we would return to Ashpoint. Just as I was determined to finish the work here, I would see the job through there as well.
I felt more at ease knowing my mother wasn’t likely to report Kit and me for our crimes with the Bone Men, but I still wondered if I would be welcomed back home after the cult was destroyed.
I wondered, too, if being turned away would be such a terrible thing.
We could open a bakery, Kit said. Leave the farm to Warren.
I’d scoffed at those notions, but they lodged in my brain, worming deeply into my thoughts until, one night after dinner, I found a chance to air them.
Kit was in the bath, Mother was in bed, and Warren and his family had returned home for the evening.
That left Sayla and me alone in the living area.
I had my sketchbook out and open, remembering how Kit told me he’d missed my drawing.
But inspiration eluded me, so the book draped across my knees, its pages bright white and barren.
“It’s been nice having Warren around so much,” Sayla said.
She tugged a little more yarn out of the ball between her knees and started another row in the first of a pair of knit wool stockings.
“He finds all of this so novel. So different from silversmithing. It must be, because I’ve never seen him so filthy.
Every day, up to his knees in dirt.” She smiled and shook her head.
“His hands are rougher now too. They remind me of Father’s. ”
My smile came with a twinge of sadness as I pulled out my roll of coloring pencils. I liked to look at them, even if I wasn’t ready to use them. The colors were arranged like the rainbows that stretched across bright spring skies, the first sign of cheer after gloomy rain.
“He seems to believe he’s quite good at farming,” Sayla added with a snicker. “Or perhaps he just wants me to think so.”
I nodded without looking up. “I’m glad he likes it.”
We lapsed into quiet, and I realized I’d opened an unwanted door when Sayla began again in a somber tone, “Penny, I appreciate what you’re trying to do—”
“Have you thought much about your wedding?” I cut in, raising my gaze to hers. “I’d love to hear your plans.”
Her lips stayed apart as though she was considering ignoring me the way I’d done to her. After a pause, she seemed to blink that notion away before replying. “I think I’d like to marry in the fall. After harvest. It will be good to have his help again for that, and finish the season before we—”
A sudden sob choked her voice, and she set down her knitting to cup her hands to her face instead.
“I’m sorry,” she said through her palms. “It’s just that I’ve realized this may be the last planting season I’ll be at home, and that will be the last harvest, and then it’s the end of this place for me.”
I slipped a hand onto her knee as she sniffled. “Sayla, no one is forcing you out. I’m not.”
She shook her head, then her green eyes cut over to meet mine. “I know you aren’t, Pen, but there’s no work for a silversmith in Eastcliff,” she explained. “Warren’s father already has to travel most of the year to sell his wares, and there isn’t enough business to sustain Warren and me, as well.”
When I’d left the farm the previous year, Sayla had been anticipating a proposal and the chance to venture out with her beau, but it seemed her mind had changed. Perhaps Father’s absence, or mine, had grown her fondness for the farm, or maybe she had her own sense of responsibility.
“Warren says there’s an artisan community in Stagcross. He believes there will be plenty of work for him there.”
“Stagcross is lovely,” I murmured, glancing at my pencils again.
Sayla sniffed and nodded. “I remember you saying so. And it was comforting to hear. I’m nervous to travel somewhere new. I know I haven’t said so, but I think you’re quite brave for leaving, Pen. You did so much in the time you were away.”
“Not all of it good,” I added in a low voice.
Sayla glanced up, her cheeks damp and nose tipped with red. “Maybe not, but…” She raised one shoulder. “You seemed happy. Happier when you arrived than you have been since.”
It was wearing thin having so many people—okay, just her and Kit—fret about my happiness without acknowledging that some things were more important than simple pleasure.
The wellbeing of multiple people and a large plot of land relied on me.
My father’s legacy rested on my shoulders.
That had to outweigh something as frivolous as joy.
I picked at the coloring pencils again, rolling my fingertips over them.
“I wish we could trade places,” Sayla said. “Then you could go, and I could stay. I can’t imagine living anywhere else or raising my children somewhere different. I always thought they would grow up like we did, running through the fields, playing in the barn, and pestering the chickens…”
It was all so casual, so wistful, like she didn’t realize how impactful those few sentences could be. I sat up so straight I nearly dumped my sketchbook on the floor, and my grip tightened on her knee.
“Sayla, you can,” I said, then nodded urgently. “You should.”
Her tear-glossed eyes widened. “Should what?”
“Stay here.” I nodded toward the back of the house with the windows and the fields and the endless expanse of it all. “With Warren. And your children whenever you have them. It’s a family home. A family should have it.”
She turned toward me and took my hand in hers. “Oh, Pen, I didn’t mean to imply you and Kit weren’t a family—”
“I know that,” I cut in. “We are a family, but I don’t think we’re farmers. I’m not.”
Sayla’s lashes fluttered through another blink, then she gazed out at the moonlit view of our land. Silence grew until she murmured, “But Father left it to you, not me.”
That was before.
Before she was betrothed.
Before I was.
Before we knew the truth about Merrick and the ruin he had caused. Here and in Ashpoint.
So much had changed, but one truth remained constant.
“Sayla, I don’t want it,” I told her. “I’ve never wanted it. I was terrified when Father told me he was leaving it in my hands. I still am.”
And if she did want it, if Warren did, then maybe happiness wasn’t so far out of reach for any of us.
“You’re too hard on yourself,” Sayla said, but I could hear her resolve weakening. “You’re doing a fine job—”
“But it’s not my dream.”
Kit had the same realization when his benefactor, Delmer died. He, too, was left with something he didn’t want, an obligation he couldn’t fulfill. He lost his farm, but I didn’t even have to lose anything, not when it could be given away to someone who would gladly accept it.
I searched my sister’s face. “If you want to stay here, Sayla, you should. Talk to Warren, see what he thinks, and let me know. The decision is yours.”
She paused, setting her knitting on the coffee table and considering the room around us with seemingly new perspective. A hopeful one. This was home to her the way the cottage in Ashpoint had become home to me. The way anywhere with Kit was home to me.
“But where will you go?” Sayla asked from the midst of her reverie. “We can’t all live here. I mean, we could build a second house—”
I shook my head. “Kit has a home in Forstford. I would go there with him.”
“And be his kept man?”
I stuck out my tongue, and she laughed loud and long. The sound made the house feel warmer than it had in days. It filled along with my heart as I watched relief wash over Sayla’s face.
After she settled, she spoke again. “You already told me you aren’t actually smithing. If you’re not farming either, what will you do?”
So many things had been suggested in recent days, notions that felt more like whims than actual possibilities. But perhaps we'd been making plans all along.
“Maybe I’ll open a bakery.”
Sayla's eyes shone with fresh tears, and she sprang forward to wrap me in a fierce embrace. I hugged her back, feeling so airy I thought I might float. My sketchbook and pencils slid aside, but I didn't mind. I had a feeling I'd have plenty of time for them soon.
“You know I'll miss you terribly,” Sayla said softly.
“Well, you're not rid of me just yet,” I replied.
I thought I might cry, too, at the return of the happiness I'd lost and the joy I'd been ready to give up. But all I felt was the same relief I knew Kit would feel when I broke the good news to him when we were curled together in the privacy of our room.
Maybe everyone could get what they wanted after all.