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“Don’t,” she says softly. “Please.”

I sigh, scrubbing a hand down my face. “We can’t justneverspeak of him, Mum.”

“I can’t,” she practically whispers, and I can hear her shutting down.

“Well…I can’t not.”

More silence. It seems we are, once again, at an impasse.

“Stay away from that girl,” my mother says finally, her tone grave. “Please.”

I don’t tell her that’s literally impossible, given our proximity, but I imagine it would do no good anyway. After this call, she’ll use whatever newest coping mechanisms she’s been reading about to push this entire conversation from her mind anyhow.

“I have to go,” I answer. “Work to be done, you know.”

I hear her sniff on the other line, and my chest clenches withsomething like guilt. Which seems insane, given that she’s the one who leftme.

“All right,” she says. “We’ll talk again soon, aye?”

No we won’t, I think, knowing her patterns.

“Aye,” I say instead.

“I love you, son.”

I take a deep breath, releasing it slowly through my nostrils before replying, “I love you too.”

I listen as she disconnects the call, feeling a bit wearier than I did a moment ago. A common occurrence when talking to my mother. I try not to blame her for leaving, I really do—but when a mother tells an eight-year-old her running off to cope is “temporary” but then just…never comes back…Well. It’s enough to make anyone a little bitter, I think. Regardless of everything she’s been through.

Because haven’t I been through the same things?

After the coffee is made, and I’ve slipped into warmer clothes, I drop down onto one of the kitchen chairs at the small table by the window with a groan to read the paper while I sip from my cup. The window by the table is streaming with sunlight now, and I reach to brush open the aged white curtains to let the light in, wanting to feel the warmth of it while I prepare for the day. I try to push the conversation with my mother out of my mind, knowing that if I let it, it will consume my thoughts for the rest of the day.

But as it turns out, the universe is ready to provide a distraction, because a second later when I peer out the window, I am greeted by the sight of what Ithinkis Rhona’s granddaughter wrestling a pitchfork from a bale of hay.

I lean onto the sill with my coffee in hand, smirking against the mug as I watch her quietly. She’s a good ways away near the barn, her pale face flushed red from exertion and her lips moving ferventlywith what I imagine are curses, given the way she’s tugging on the pitchfork so violently. She braces her booted (because it seems that sometime in the last week while I have been avoiding her, she’s managed to find a proper pair of wellies, even if they are a garish pink color) foot against the heavy bale, pulling at the wooden handle with all her might for several seconds before nearly falling backward on her arse. She’s not the most graceful woman I’ve ever met, despite what her long, lean body might suggest.

I would like to say that watching her doesn’t make me smile, but the quirk of my lips would make me a damned liar. I tell myself that I am laughingather, which is a perfectly acceptable way to treat the enemy, which is a necessary distinction. I take another swig from my mug as she starts to pace back and forth in front of the hay, glaring at the pitchfork as if it’s personally offended her, and I suspect in a way, it has. The entire thing is even more hilarious given that I know she has no chance of pulling that fork out; I stabbed the thing in the bale myself just yesterday, and I have it on good authority that I am much stronger than her. Than most people, really. One of the few perks of being a Greer son.

I contemplate for a few minutes on whether or not I should rescue her while watching her toil on fruitlessly, knowing full well that I absolutelyshouldn’t, but for some reason, having a slight desire to do so anyway. It’s because I like to see her angry expression, I think. That’s definitely it. It’s satisfying in a way that has nothing to do with how it makes her green eyes shine brighter. Nothing at all.

Boots on and decision made, I leave the peace of the cottage and trudge outside; the weather has been better this week, so the ground is relatively dry, but it’s still fairly chilly. Keyanna is still muttering to herself as I draw near her, so much so that she doesn’t notice me coming up behind her.

Not until I lean in close to murmur, “Having trouble, princess?”

I’m rewarded by her slim frame jolting a good meter into the air, a shrill sound squawking out of her that is not princess-like at all. She whips around and gives me her best glare, her cheeks a ruddy pink and her titian brows knitted tightly between her emerald eyes.

“Don’t scare me like that!”

“I didn’t do anything but walk over,” I tell her. “You didn’t hear me, I think. Too busy cursing the poor hay bale here.”

She shoots a disdainful look back toward the bale in question. “Rhona asked me to give Girdie some hay, and I am trying to be useful, but I can’t even get the stick out of it. How am I supposed to move it?”

There’s something almost admirable about her determination to win over her grandmother. If she were anyone else, I might even tell her that. As it is, I think I’ll keep it to myself.

“Hm.” I rub my fingers along the neat bristle of my bearded jaw, going for a ruminating look. “That is a puzzle, isn’t it?”

“Can you get it out?”