Bristling, I crossed my arms. Whatever he was getting at, I wished he would come out with it. “Why should I?” Iasked, my voice sharp. “He’s always coming and going. I hardly think about it. I’m just glad when he’s gone.” The words spilled out of my mouth like blasphemy, and I cupped my hand over my lips.
In contrast to my sudden shock, Kit remained impassive. “Whose idea was it to bury your father, Penny?”
“I told you before.” Why would he make me admit it again? “It’s my fault. I was afraid…” I trailed off, looking away to cover the sudden flush of shame.
“Didyousuggest it?” Kit pressed. “The burial?”
“I don’t remember…”
“Try,” Kit told me. “Think hard.”
The day my father died was one of the darkest of my life. Mother, Sayla, Merrick, and I stood around his bed, huddled together as he drew his last breath. Rather, Mother, Sayla, and I crowded in, me in the middle with one arm around each of the women. Merrick had lingered on the other side of the mattress, aloof, his arms crossed.
After Father’s chest rose then fell with a final, rattling gasp, I looked over at my brother and wished I had his composure. I felt raw. Hollow. My eyes were full of tears as Sayla sobbed against my side and Mother daubed her face with a kerchief.
We’d had time to prepare. Watching Father wither and fail over months made his passing a foregone conclusion. But inevitability didn’t ease the pain.
“What’s to become of us, Pen?” Sayla had sniffled, using my shirt to dry her eyes.
“I’ll take care of you.” A sorrowful sob threatened to choke me, but I muscled it down. “Don’t worry.”
Merrick cleared his throat. “Penwell? Would you join me outside?”
I looked over at my brother as hot tears streaked my cheeks.“Right now?” I asked.
Merrick nodded and turned, heading for the door without another word.
Pulling free of the women, I tailed after my brother. He didn’t face me again until we were outside the cottage, washed in the crisp light of an autumn sunrise.
“I assume you aren’t up to it,” he said, as though the statement stood alone.
I shivered, feeling chilled and teary. “Up to what?”
He could have meant anything. Or everything. I looked across the freshly shorn fields stretching toward the horizon.
“The funeral pyre,” Merrick explained. “The burning.”
I trembled again, this time not from the cold. “That’s the custom. I’ll manage.”
Merrick laid his hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to.”
I peered into his eyes as green as my own and found his usually rigid features soft.
He’d never been sympathetic about it before, casting blame from the start. It was my fault the barn burned. My fault we lost our winter stores. My fault Sayla got hurt…
I rubbed my palm up my scar-striped forearm.
“We could bury him instead,” Merrick continued. “Find a quiet place, somewhere no one will look.”
I’d thought his offer kind, and my brother was so rarely kind. He claimed it was for Sayla and me, so we didn’t have to face the scorching heat and the pungent stench of skin charring.
“Your brother’s here, Penny.” Kit’s statement returned me to the present. “He came by while you were out and introduced himself as the Shroud Warden. The Bone Men’s second in command. He’s Vi’s husband, the one with the supposed farmhand named Penny.”
It sounded like a foreign language, words I didn’t fully understand. Or maybe I didn’t want to.
Kit set his mug on the table and stood, taking a few steps toward me while I gaped. “He’s been lying to you and your family, and I think he’s the one who took your father’s body.”
“That’s not… that can’t be true,” I said. But I was beginning to fear it was.
