“He died.” Kit held his own cup with both hands, staring into the dark liquid.
My lips pulled in a frown. “I’m sorry.”
He grunted and shifted in his seat. “Don’t be. I’m not.”
My gaze dropped to the next page of the journal, but I hesitated to read on under Kit’s watchful eye.
“Go on.” He nodded at the book. “But I won’t be held to blame if you give yourself nightmares.”
I swallowed again and forced my eyes to focus on the text. It was a mammoth work. Daily logs stretched over months. Glancing at the coffee table again found the other,similar volumes piled up. It must have been years’ worth of documentation.
“How long ago did your father pass?” Kit asked after a few moments of quiet.
The question prickled my skin. I hadn’t gotten used to it yet. In the flurry of the death, the burial, the shock of the stolen body… I’d had many excuses not to think about the loss that drove me here. Unlike Kit, I had always been fond of my father. He was a constant, steady presence, who taught and guided with patient hands. As a walking hazard to our quiet farm life, I needed more than my share of that patience.
My brother, Merrick—ten years my elder—was far less forgiving. Sniping, cynical, and ever ready to deliver reprimand, he took pleasure in marching me before our parents to be scolded for my latest slight. When Father laughed off my shortcomings, Merrick administered the punishment himself. In my younger years, he exacted discipline with a switch. As we both grew, he found he could wound me more effectively with his words.
“It’s been three weeks,” I said as though solidifying the fact in my mind. “But he’d been ill a long time before that.”
My father suffered from a wasting sort of sickness. The kind of infirmity that took everything else from him before it finally claimed his life. He fought it for a year until he fell in the pasture while bringing in the sheep I’d left out. After that, he never got up again, bedfast and withering before our eyes until, one day, he was gone.
Kit hummed a soft sound. “Still fresh, then.”
The body or the grief?
I didn’t care enough to ask.
Forgoing the book, I studied Kit’s profile, downturned and cast in perpetual shadow. It struck me suddenly thatthe darkness I saw on him came from within, like ink bleeding through thin paper.
I could think of few things worse than voluntary branding and grave robbing, andnothingworse than being raised by a man who wanted his child to suffer.
Beside me, Kit sipped his coffee through a fog of steam.
Did I want him to change his plans back?
Maybe I should have.
7
Kit
Breakfast was an excruciating combination of questions and incessant chatter from my soon-to-be traveling companion. In the brief interludes when his mouth was too full of food to talk, I tried not to notice the furtive glances he sent in my direction focused on where I’d shown him my brand. There was pity or sympathy there, and I couldn’t handle either after the week I’d had.
Thankfully, Penny offered to wash the dishes and clean up after our meal, and I escaped to my room to get dressed for the day. I had deliveries to make, and if we were to catch the transport when it rolled through town the day after next, I needed to arrange for someone to look after the house while I was gone. I allowed myself only a few moments of wondering if I’d ever come back here before tucking those worries away for another day.
As much as I craved the silence that existed in his absence, there was no chance I would leave Penny alone in my house while I went about my business in town. So, onceI was dressed, I returned to the kitchen where he was putting the last of the plates in the cabinet.
“Go put on some clean clothes and brush your hair. If you’re going to be here, you can at least be useful. I have need of your strong back today.”
A smile lit his face. “I can be useful. What are we going to do?”
“I have some things to deliver, and it’ll be quicker with two sets of hands. But no questions about the Bone Men while we’re in town. I’d rather not broadcast my business for everyone to hear.” I motioned toward the den. “Your bag’s next to the couch. I’ll wait for you outside.”
I didn’t wait for his response before slipping out and settling into the chair on the porch. I breathed in the cool of the morning and soaked in the near silence and intermittent birdsong.
When Penny joined me a few minutes later, I groaned at the sight of him. His hair was combed, but his clothes were rumpled and smudged with dirt.
“Don’t you have anything else?” I asked, and he shook his head. With a sigh, I motioned for him to follow me back into the house. “I won’t be seen with you like this.”
