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Istayed for the remainder of Kaleb’s shift, helping him clean, and although he thanked me as we walked out the door, my intentions were not that pure—the cottage was the last place any living, breathing thing should be today, excluding Ezra, but she was a breed of her own.
Before I left this morning, I had spied the jar of fermented rabbit droppings sitting on the counter and instantly I knew—she was making Mrs. Stoddard’s salve today. This particular concoction of Ezra’s was so vile, so offensive to the nostrils, that I was surprised the woods had not plucked themselves up by the roots and left the cottage to stand on its own. And despite Ezra’s solution to open a window and let itair out, there were not enough windows in Edenvale to let itair out.
How that poor woman, Mrs. Stoddard, applied it to her feet every night—the gods only knew. And how her poor husband remained at her side . . .
Thatmust be true love.
“I would have stayed in Meristone for the night had I known Ezra was going to be making Mrs. Stoddard’s salve today,” Kaleb said with a sigh as we walked back to the cottage, the path riddled with sticks and fallen leaves that crunched under our shoes. He sighed again. “It took me a week to regain my sense of smell after the last time.”
My eyes went wide. Oh yes, how could I have forgotten the last time? The death batch.
“You weren’t even home when she made it,” I seethed, sibling rivalry nipping at my heels for this round ofWho Had it Worse. “It made my skin look purple. Purple, Kaleb.”
He howled with laughter. “Oh, that’s right!” He gulped down a breath of air in between snickers. “None of the vendors would have anything to do with you because they thought you had purple fever.” His laughter reached hysterical proportions and he threw his hands over his stomach as if it were hurting him to laugh this hard.
I squinted at him. “Shut it, you hyena.”
He offered acan you blame me?smirk and reigned himself in as he wiped away his tears, although every now and then, the memory would resurface, and a hiccup of a chuckle ripped out of him.
I rolled my eyes with added emphasis before I quickly turned away, hiding my smile.
“Do you remember when we were kids, we made up that secret language with our hands so we could talk without Ezra knowing?”
“Of course, I remember.” I glanced up at him. “Which one do you remember the most?”
“Ironically, this one.” He raised his hand, two fingers tapping the spot over his heart twice. It was how we made up after one of our childhood spats. One tap to signal that we were sorry, and the second tap meant that we loved one another, more than anything else.
I couldn’t help but smile. “That’s the one I remember the most too.” For the remainder of our walk back to the cottage, we joked with one another, riffing off one another, just as we always did. And although there was no blood between us, there never really needed to be for us to be siblings—family.
When we returned to our cottage home, it smelled . . . pleasant—of peppermint and wood. The hearth was unlit, and Ezra was gone.
Ezra leaving without a word was not uncommon. In fact, it was something she used to do rather frequently.
I found myself thrust into an old memory.
My uncertain, twelve-year-old eyes peered out the window, the single pane of glass chattering in fear at the wind’s heavy blows. The blizzard had lasted for the past three days, forming mountains of fluffy, white snow—the kind you could play for hours in without noticing it chilled you to the bone.
Today marked one month and five days since Ezra was last home, and like our decreasing stack of wood, my hopes were starting to fade.
“Don’t worry. She’ll be back,” Kaleb assured me as he placed the last four logs in the fireplace, the bed of embers glowing red hot, lapping at them hungrily. Despite his reassurance, I saw the way he looked at the empty firewood rack—the uncertainty, the worry written on his face.
“What if she doesn’t come back this time?” I asked, my little heart aching.
Kaleb gathered my hands in his, looked me square in the face, and said, “She will. She always comes home.”
A fraction of me sighed with relief.
He frowned, his thumbs brushing my cold fingers. “Here, come sit. It will warm you up.” He led me towards the fire. I nodded as I plopped down, my legs crisscrossed. A blanket fell over my shoulders.
“Okay, you watch the fire. I’ll be right back,” he said before trudging over to the door and beginning to bundle up.
I turned away from the fire, watching him. “You can’t go outside in the storm. You won’t be able to see.”
He batted a hand at me. “I’ll be fine.”
Kaleb had hit a growth spurt recently, and his hands no longer fit in the gloves from last year, no matter how hard he tried to wedge them in. And so, he pulled down his sleeves, slung the axe over his shoulder, and walked out the door into the blizzard’s mouth.
When the door closed, I scrambled to my lookout spot by the window and searched for him, but the blowing, swirling, raging snow had swallowed him whole. My nervous breath fogged up the glass. I pinched the fabric of my long-sleeve shirt, pulling it up so I could scrub the fog away, my eyes frantically searching for him.
