I raised an eyebrow. “How long is a while?”
He swallowed before answering, “Long enough to be competent at basic farm work.”
Heat rushed my face, and I scowled.
Kit raised his empty hand, palm out. “I didn’t mean that against you. You’ve done a fine job here considering everything that’s happened…”
He stumbled through the words while I fished into my boot to retrieve my sketchbook. A ribbon marker held my place on the page with the list my mother had given me.
“This is about the sum of it.” I thrust the journal at him.
Kit took the book and skimmed the list.After a moment, he set his plate aside and wiped his hands on the kerchief hanging from his pants pocket. Then, he nodded. “I think we can make time for this before we go.”
11
Penny
Mother’s list took the rest of the day. I felt better leaving her and Sayla knowing I wouldn’t also be leaving work outstanding for untold days or weeks. It came as equal relief that Merrick would have no cause to disparage me in my absence, though he would find one regardless.
Kit’s knowledge of farm life proved extensive, as did his list of talents. He seemed to know a bit about everything and accomplished tasks with ease. I was used to following the lead of those more adept than me, but it came as a blow to my ego that the more adept party this time was someone I had begged help from already. To need his aid with something that should have beenmyexpertise grated on me.
My wounded pride recovered in the mid-afternoon when I was too distracted by the spectacle of Kit chopping a fallen tree into firewood to be mad about anything at all. By the time he finished splitting the logs I was meant to stack, I had nearly forgotten every one of my sister’s taunting comments about Kit being my suitor, absurdcow dowries, and Dawson Hilliard. The wrestling match turned failed kiss happened five years ago, but had proven the kind of mistake bound to follow me forever.
Kit leaned the axe against the weathered old stump we used for chopping, then mopped his forehead with his kerchief. Sweat pasted his shirt to his torso and muscular arms, and his cheeks were flushed from exertion. He wandered over to where I sat cross-legged beside a pail of drinking water. As he approached, I dipped a tin cup into the pail to fill it and held it out for him.
He took the drink and guzzled it down, then turned and sat beside me. Crossing his hands behind his head, he laid back and let out a long breath.
“How long has this property been in your family?” he asked.
I glanced over at him, trying to focus on the question but only seeing the sharp angle of his jaw and the hollow between his collarbones where his skin glistened.
“It was my father’s, and his father’s… Perhaps his father’s, as well?” Kit’s brow furrowed, and I shrugged. “Some years. I’m sure he told me, but…”
My family’s biggest point of pride had never been mine. The farm was my home, but as I grew, it became less a place and more of a living thing. A mouth to be fed, a crushing obligation. I’d believed, as the second son, that the responsibility for securing the Oliver family legacy would pass me over. Then Father surprised us all by changing the plan.
“He should have left it to Merrick instead,” I confessed. “It was his birthright; he prepared for it all his life.”
“If he was to inherit the farm, then why did he join the militia?”
“I’m not sure. He rarely bothers to explain himself to me.” But I’d gathered enough from listening to my parentsargue and my mother cry to know it had something to do with the fire. Merrick was nineteen when it happened, very much a man, and far less forgiving of my near-fatal mistake than my mother and father.
Things at home changed after that. Our parents treated Sayla and me like we were fragile things. We never got in trouble, even when we should have, and I remembered nasty fights when Merrick claimed Father was failing to rear me like a proper man, blaming him for my “strange proclivities,” my laziness, my shortcomings.
“Merrick’s better suited to this, is all.” I gestured to the fields stretching out around us. “And he’d be able to pass it on someday. To his own sons.”
Kit pushed up on his elbows, his eyes creasing with his frown. “So could you.”
He sounded so confident that I wondered if he’d forgotten the previous night’s dinner show, courtesy of Sayla. “You heard my sister. I don’t…” I looked aside. “I don’t fancy women. That’s a bit of problem when it comes to bearing children.”
He nodded as he replied, “There are other ways of making a family.”
“I suppose.”
Sitting fully upright, Kit grabbed the tin cup I’d set aside and dipped it into the pail again. He sipped more slowly this time while watching the sun’s journey toward the horizon.
“Should I take all that to mean you don’t believe what your sister said?” he mused. “That Merrick would put you all on the street if he was in charge of things?”
I snorted. “I doubt it. He’d need the hands to run the farm, and who better than the kind you don’t have to pay?” My attempt at humor sounded more sour than I intended.
