“I’ll join you.” Kit didn’t hesitate, but I did. In fact, I nearly tripped over my own feet.
“You don’t need to,” I told him. “There’s nothing to see but a hole in the ground.”
He nodded, and his eyes fixed on the path ahead. “Ah, but if I linger in the barn, your mother will come asking my opinion on the state of your plow blades.”
I thought back to the last time I stored the plow, and how Father commented on its failing condition.
“They are a bit dull,” I admitted, “and rusty.”
Kit glanced over at me. “Have they not been cleaned? Or oiled?”
My features pinched in a frown. “I may have forgotten… more than once.”
Kit’s grunt of acknowledgment lacked the scorn I’d grown to expect.
The truth was, I forgot a lot of things. That trait got me sent away from the fields and back to the house with Mother and Sayla. Picking up after me made extra work for Father and Merrick and cost the family more money than my help was worth.
I was no great asset here, especially not over the coming winter months when the ground was too hard for planting and the air too cold for growing. I could do more good—somegood, at least—by going. Though, if I failed again, I may not have it in me to return at all.
9
Kit
It was a long walk through and around the fields and pasture, so I did indeed end up seeing everything the Oliver family farm had to offer. Penny narrated as we wandered, telling me about crop rotation and the areas left to founder during his father’s sickness. He pointed out his favorite cows: the old heifer he and his sister rode around on as children and the orphaned twins they bottle-fed the year before. The smaller twin was up at the fence line, and I snuck in a few scratches under her chin while Penny wasn’t looking.
As we trekked along, I found I minded his constant chatter less than I had a few days before. Seeing where he came from, meeting his family, and being on the receiving end of their hospitality—not to mention the entertainment I got from watching Sayla rake him over the coals—finally had me letting down a little of my guard. Penny wasn’t a threat, even if his arrival had reopened old wounds. Those had been festering for a long time, and there would be no healing them without giving them space to breathe.
It took almost twenty minutes to reach the woods that flanked the property and navigate through them to the clearing where Penny’s father had been laid to rest. Despite the gloomy weather, it was peaceful there. Late-season wildflowers dotted the ground, and a few scrubby bushes gave texture to the otherwise flat space.
Penny led the way to where the ground had been dug up and his father’s body carefully interred. A small pile of rocks was the only marker, innocuous enough as to be easily missed unless someone knew what had been buried there.
When Penny stopped at the foot of the grave, it was like seeing him on my porch all over again. His shoulders drew in and his head dipped, and guilt gnawed at the pit of my stomach.
I’d told him this was his fault. I’d said so because, at the time, I wanted to hurt him, to chase him off before he could go waking up old ghosts. But I couldn’t blame him for not putting his father’s body on a pyre.
We weren’t meant to burn our dead. Buried, they gave us a place to go to seek comfort or reminisce. There, we could say the things we needed our lost loved ones to hear and share the bits of life they were missing. A grave was a remembrance for everyone who came after. But if the body was burned instead, those memories no longer lingered. Time swept them away like the wind took the ashes.
“We buried my mother.” My statement startled Penny from his thoughts. “Though I can’t be sure she stayed that way after…” I turned away under the guise of glancing at the trees, but it was really to hide the pain it brought to think of my father going back to dig her up. “We picked a place a lot like this. Quiet. Secluded. Laid her in the roots of an old willow tree.”
“That sounds beautiful,” Penny replied. “Serene.”
I kept my eyes on anything but him. “It was.”
He was quiet for a moment before asking, “How old were you when she died?”
Twenty-five years later, talking about her still hurt. I hadn’t meant to bring her up, especially not to Penny. He had his own grief, and he didn’t need me to impose mine on the situation. But when I finally chanced a look over, his face was full of sympathy I wasn’t used to. He cared for my pain, even while he was feeling his own.
Clearly, he was the better man between us.
“Five,” I finally said. “I hardly remember her anymore.”
He prodded a loose clump of dirt with the toe of his boot. “That’s very young to be without a mother. It must have been hard on you and your father.” His eyes jerked up when he realized he’d broached a potentially unwelcome topic. Then, he smiled sheepishly and barreled on before I could respond. “Merrick’s mother died when he was young, too. He’s actually only my half-brother.”
I was rapidly tiring of being compared to the elder Oliver brother. When Penny wasn’t overtly telling me I reminded him of Merrick, he was implying our similarities.
On that note, it struck me as odd that the militia would call up a man whose father had so recently passed rather than letting him stay home to settle affairs. Leave was regularly granted for such things, which led me to wonder how long before or after the body was stolen Merrick had left.
Before I could ask, Penny swung toward me. Concern drew down the corners of his mouth.
