2. Kit
Kit
Idetoured off the main road at daybreak, chasing the last vestiges of night while the sun crept over the horizon behind me. I wasn’t ready to face Ashpoint alone, and no one was expecting either Penny or me back for another week, so I planned to take all time I had to spare.
I hadn’t visited the town where I was born in over a decade, but I knew by heart how to get to Willowvale, and to the little place just outside of it on the banks of the Veilwater where my father and I buried the last bright part of my childhood.
A day’s ride was all it would take to get to the still-familiar community tucked into a bend in the river.
I’d had family there once, before my mother died and her parents moved on because they couldn’t bear to be reminded of her everywhere they looked.
There’d been an aunt and a cousin then, too, but by the time I made it back after my escape from Ashpoint, they were long gone.
No one even remembered them enough to tell me where they’d moved.
There was nobody left there who knew me anymore, and it was probably better that way. It wasn’t as if I could stay.
As the sun climbed higher, flat farmland gave way to rolling hills of grass and wildflowers interspersed with knots of trees.
White dogwood flowers flashed between magnolia branches heavy-laden with pink and yellow blooms. Their sweet, mild scent lingered every time the cart brushed against branches encroaching on the road.
Everything was a riot of color, but the sunny buttercups drew my eye every time they peeked out of the long grass. They twisted at my insides, bringing back plans for a wedding and thoughts of pledging my life to the man I loved in front of a wall of sunflowers.
There was a good chance I ruined everything. I’d done the one thing Penny made me promise not to: I left him behind. No matter my intentions, he might never forgive me. I spent hours and miles trying to convince myself I could live with that if it meant that he lived, too.
It didn’t work.
I didn’t stop for lunch. My stomach was in knots, so anything I ate was likely to come right back up. Better not to waste the little food I’d taken from the Olivers, and riding through meant I would make it to an inn before dark.
By the time I crested the last hill overlooking the sprawl of buildings that made up Willowvale, it was nearly dusk.
The colors of the setting sun reflected off the ripples of the Veilwater, overpowering the small oil lanterns that hung along the main thoroughfare through town.
I watched as the last stalls in the market shuttered and the townsfolk filtered either home or to the derelict shed at the end of the lane that barely constituted a pub.
Part of me wanted to join them and drown my guilt in whiskey. To be a sad, no-name stranger to people who could have been friends or family in another life.
But I’d told Penny he wasn’t the kind of man who drank his sorrows, and he’d changed me into the kind of man who didn’t, either.
So, I clicked my tongue to set the mare into motion and headed for the squat, whitewashed building overlooking the river.
A carved wooden sign proclaiming it to be the Willow Inn swayed in the breeze.
The man behind the counter inside—engrossed in whittling a block of wood into the rough shape of a sheep—hardly spared me a glance.
He counted out the coin I traded for pasture space for the horse and a room, then handed over an iron key dark with age.
He returned to his task, knife scraping rhythmically on wood, as I stepped back outside.
Once the horse was bedded down and the cart parked alongside the fence, I hauled my bag into the inn and to the rear corner room.
The air inside was stagnant, and dust motes hung in the last slant of sunlight cutting through the window above the narrow bed.
The only other furniture in the room was a stool that served as a bedside table, topped with an oil lamp and a tin of matches.
On the wall to the left of the bed, the unlit fireplace was stacked with logs.
In the month and a half since the disaster at the mission in Wendwood, building the fires at home had been my responsibility.
With memories of being trapped in the burning mission far too fresh, Penny preferred to go without.
But the fire kept us warm, and I kept him safe.
How could I do that when he was in Eastcliff and I was here?
Who would keep him safe from the fire now?
The door closed behind me, and my breath stuttered in short, shallow gasps.
I didn’t need a fire here because the room was too hot.
Too stuffy. The walls suddenly felt too close, the room too small—or maybe I was too big.
I was suffocating for the second time that day as my heart hammered in my ears and blotted out everything else.
The nausea that had bubbled in the pit of my stomach since the night before redoubled, forcing bile up my throat.
I swallowed it down and scrambled for the bed.
My bag dropped with a thump beside it, and I didn’t even have the presence of mind to kick off my boots before climbing up to kneel on the pillow at the head of it to heave the window open.
A chilly breeze rushed in, and I hung my head outside, gulping in lungfuls of air yet still feeling breathless.
I shouldn’t be here. Not alone. Penny should be with me, joking about how we would manage to fit in this bed together, and how he didn’t mind draping atop me like a man-shaped blanket; or pulling out his sketchbook to do a study of the way the colors of dusk turned the Veilwater into a river of flames; or chattering about all the things he wanted me to show him in the morning.
He would have made the man at the front desk smile, trading tips he’d learned from tooling leather and carving almost every tool handle in the forge.
He would probably have ended up staying up to all hours whittling with the grouchy inn owner while I sat back and sipped a cup of weak coffee and watched him light up a stranger’s world like he'd illuminated mine.
Only eighteen hours apart, and already I missed him.
Eventually, my breathing eased, my heart slowed, and exhaustion followed—bone deep and aching. I unlaced my boots with shaking hands, then let the shoes drop to the floor before I pulled my knees up to my chest and leaned against the windowsill.
I kept vigil at the window long after the light faded from the sky and the stars blinked into view. Sometime after the moon rose, the soft whisper of the river lulled me into a restless sleep.
Every muscle was stiff when the sun woke me the next morning. My neck was sore from the angle of my head resting against the casement, and my back protested when I tried to straighten and stretch. I was freezing on top of everything, though I couldn’t blame anyone but myself for that.
It took a few tries to drag the window back down with my cold-numb hands. Finally, it hit the sill with a slam that was sure to wake whoever shared a wall with me.
I made quick work of changing my clothes, stepping into my boots, and swinging my cloak around my shoulders.
The room was paid for until midday, but it was too depressing to spend any more time than necessary in that cramped space alone.
Once everything was packed away, I shouldered my bag and returned to the front desk.
There was an older woman there now, and she had a smile for me when I handed back the key.
“I’ll be back to get the horse and cart after I’ve gotten some breakfast,” I told her. “Shouldn’t be more than an hour.”
“No rush, sir,” she said as she replaced the key on its hook. “Best place for breakfast is the baker’s stall at the market. She makes the most delicious sausage sandwiches. Sure to fill you up for your travels.”
I nodded my thanks and stepped out into the late morning sunshine. The market was a straight shot down the road, but my feet took me instead down the path across from the inn and past several rows of houses.
They looked nothing like the homes in Ashpoint.
Where those were utilitarian, these were painted in half a dozen different colors, all warm and welcoming in their brightness.
Two women hung washing on the line in the shared yard of their neighboring houses.
Their laughter carried on the breeze as I passed.
A few houses farther down the lane, a young girl chased a shaggy black dog in front of a modest white cottage.
I drew to a stop in front of a similar house at the end of the path, and a pang of longing throbbed in my chest. The front stoop was a sprawl of pots filled with flowers and herbs, and a fat yellow tabby stretched across the bottom step.
Smoke curled from the chimney, and dark-stained shutters flanked the front windows like arms spread wide to welcome me home.
This hadn’t been home since I was a child, but I had a few faint, fond memories here.
Sitting on that stoop enveloped in my mother’s embrace with the citrus smell of her soap curling around us.
Running, shrieking with laughter, while my father chased me through this yard.
Gathering with family around the dinner table, far too many people crammed into our tiny kitchen and yet not feeling overwhelmed by their presence.
Joy and belonging and safety built this home into a foundation I’d largely forgotten after my father shattered it.
But years after I’d given up on ever having more than a meager, lonely existence, I found it again in Penny.
He patched the cracks and filled the spaces that had been hollowed out by decades of destruction and neglect.
He propped me up when I felt like collapsing in on myself.
He made me feel like I deserved to be happy after all.
Like father, like son, apparently. I had everything I ever wanted, then went and re-broke what he destroyed twenty-five years before.