I offered my arm but didn’t breathe until she took it. She held my elbow and let me lead her through the house and out the back door.
Outside, spring had settled over the farm. Mornings were misty, but the rain of our first day here had stayed gone, leaving sunshine and a crisp breeze as pleasant working conditions. I wasn’t sure if Mother had yet seen all we’d accomplished, but it was plainly before her now. Fields were tilled, livestock tended, and seed ready to sow. Kit was right. It could be a banner year.
I didn’t say much as we walked the property. A mention here of our plans for the previously fallow fields, a nod toward Warren and how enthusiastically he’d taken to every task. He said he wanted to impress my sister, but having Mother’s approval couldn’t hurt. Though, from the way she smiled when she gazed across the acreage at her future son-in-law, it seemed that was a battle Warren had already won.
Kit, on the other hand, had not yet fallen into those good graces. He’d been focused on consoling me and keeping the long days of plowing from driving me to madness, but I knew he was bothered by it all. I’d told him this would be his family and his home. Seeing him turned away from it was a slow form of torture.
“Kit’s been invaluable,” I said, trying and failing to sound casual. “I couldn’t have done this without him.”
My meaning and sweeping gesture were for the farm. The land where she’d made her home. Her livelihood. But the way her expression darkened made it clear her thoughts were elsewhere.
“No, I suppose you couldn’t have.” She pulled her arm free to fold across her chest. “Myboy would never…”
My gaze snapped over sharply, and she sighed.
“You wouldn’t, Pen. And if those horrible claims had come from any other source, I wouldn’t have believed them. Do you know how badly I want to deny it? To defend you? My son is no criminal, no cultist.”
“Mother, we’re helping them. The people in Ashpoint aren’t bad, just misled.I’mnot bad… And Kit…” I glanced back to see my intended walking dutifully behind the plow, taking care of responsibilities that were rightfully mine.
It wasn’t enough. Insisting on positive intentions, assuring her how desperately I loved the man who had spent the past half year caring for me, telling her she was wrong in her assumptions about the Bone Men and in my purpose there… I’d relied on Sayla’s account until now, and had been relieved to be spared confessing to my mother the things I never wanted her to know. But she needed to hear it—all of it—from me.
“Do you know why I went there?” I asked.
Mother winced as though she, too, would rather have avoided this, but if I was tired of being ignored, then I needed to let her see me.
“Your father,” Mother replied softly.
I nodded and ventured ahead. “To steal his body back. To lay him to rest. I knew you feared the curse?—”
“Fearedit?” Mother’s voice jumped to a higher pitch. “It’s upon us even now, Penwell!”
That drew me up short, almost scoffing as I glanced at the verdant earth around us. “How is this a curse?”
But when I looked at my mother, her lip wobbled, and tears scattered from her lashes. “Don’t you see?” she murmured. “It’s trying to take you from me.”
My heart clenched with sorrowful relief as I turned toward her and took her hands in mine.
“No.” I shook my head. “No curse would take me from you, Mother, and I don’t believe…”
Starting that conversation caused her expression to harden, but I couldn’t leave it lie.
“They’re wrong about Eeus,” I said. “They’ve turned him into something wicked, and I’ve seen… I’ve learned better, Mother. They can learn better, too. When I found out Father’s body was lost, I thought I was staying there to destroy everything. Or to prove something to Merrick. But so many of the people just want to belong. They don’t have what we do.”
Again, I gestured to the fields cast in beams of golden sun. The people in Ashpoint had made their homes there. Itwasthe community they sought, and it deserved to be preserved.
“But they can,” I insisted. “They want to legitimize. To change. And Kit and I are helping with that. We’re saving them, Mother.”
“I worry less about them and more about you.” This time, Mother caught my elbow and used her grip to pull my head around. “I want to be happy for you, but I must wonder if what I thought was a good thing isn’t a good thing at all. The idea of an apprenticeship was hard enough, but now, I fear you’ve been led astray, that this stranger has taken advantage of your kind heart and easy trust…”
I couldn’t hide my scowl, but Mother was not to be deterred.
“I know you’ve felt like you didn’t have many”—she paused to consider—“options, but the world is large. There are other men?—”
“I don’t want another man, Mother,” I interjected, shaking free of her grasp. “I don’t want another anyone. I chose Kit. I pursuedhim.”
Memories surged of the way I’d cornered him in Forstford, dreamed of him while lying in my bedroom in Ashpoint, then grabbed him by the shirt in the pecan orchard when I could no longer ignore my own desires.
That final thought came with the vivid image of Kit’s stunned expression, slack-jawed in the moonlight, and a laugh bubbled out of me. “I pursued him relentlessly, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop.”
