Page 22 of A Land So Wide

She nodded.

He waited.

A strained smile tugged her lips. “You don’t think I’ll tell you where, do you? That would hardly be sporting.”

“Of course not,” Hessel said after a long moment passed between them, as wide as a canyon. “I wish you luck. Today is an important time in a young person’s life. I didn’t ever…I never thought it would come.”

She frowned. “Didn’t you?”

“It seemed so far off. Ailie always…” He stopped abruptly.

“What?” Greer pressed, needing to hear something of her mother, today of all days.

He glanced away. “I found her once in a flood of tears. You and Louise were playing outside, making little dolls out of pinecones or some such….” He shook his head as if those details didn’t matter.

“She’d been watching you from the window as she worked on a pile of mending.

And I noticed she was crying. I thought she must have stabbed herself with the needle or…

” Again, he paused, ill at ease with the words and phrases used so frequently in the feminine realm.

“I asked if she was all right, and she said that that Beaufort boy had brought Louise over. That he’d said something to make you smile. ”

Greer tried remembering the day in question, but couldn’t.

“She said he’d go on making you smile just like that and you’d follow after him. She said she could see it all—that you’d follow him down the aisle, follow him all through life, follow him even into death. She said there wasn’t a place on earth you wouldn’t follow that boy to.”

Greer’s heart warmed.

It didn’t matter if it was by special sight or mere conjecture. Her mother had been right.

Hessel’s thick eyebrows furrowed, and he almost looked ashamed.

“I rebuffed it. Told her that was nonsense. That you were nothing but a little girl, still tied to her skirt strings. Told her that you were too good to wind up with some Beaufort. That your Hunt was ages away and it was foolish to be worrying over some imagined…” His hands fluttered in the air, fruitlessly trying to grab hold of the right words. He sighed. “But here we are.”

“Here we are,” she echoed, feeling a stab of pride in her chest.

Like the explorers in her tattered adventure novels, Greer was about to embark on a journey, new and exciting. She was going to marry that Beaufort boy, no matter how Hessel had tried to forbid it.

For the good of the town.

Greer hadn’t understood what Hessel had meant last night, but now, standing on the edge of this great precipice, her life about to unfold, just like a map, she thought she almost did.

Mistaken was facing dangerous unknowns. Its very air was rife with uncertainty, sour with fear. But in just a few short hours, Greer would have someone to face that fear with, someone to wrap her hand around and hold on to, no matter what was to come.

And that filled her with hope. Hope for miracles and better days. Hope for a future spent with the one she loved. It was hope that allowed a person to keep going on, even as it seemed the odds were stacked against them.

She would have Ellis. And he would have her.

And that was something.

“Father…” she began, feeling suddenly inspired. “This is a special day.”

Hessel nodded.

“Mama always told me so much about the day of her Hunt. Your Hunt. I…It would mean so much to have something of hers with me today. Do you think I might…” She swallowed, growing bold. “Could I wear her cape? The velvet one she wore when you found her?”

Hessel’s eyes darkened. “No.”

“I just…I thought that maybe—”

“I said no.” His words fell out as flat and heavy as an anvil.

“But—”

“It’s gone, Greer. The cape is no more.”

Greer knitted her fingers together, feeling cold.

Ailie’s velvet cape had been her most cherished possession.

It was the same dark hue as a twilight sky and covered with hundreds of constellations, stitched by Ailie herself.

Greer had learned how to read the night sky from that cape, wondering over each piece of embroidery as her mother told her the stories behind every star cluster.

Greer had assumed Hessel had stored it away, saving it as a piece of treasure to bestow upon her one day. That he could have gotten rid of it hurt her more than she had words to say.

Hessel seemed to realize his error and shuffled his feet over the threshold, looking contrite. “They’ll be starting the festivities soon. We oughtn’t be late for that.”

Greer nodded, and gave her room one final glance. The next time she stepped foot into it, she’d be a married woman, packing up her girlhood to bring to Ellis’s cabin. Their home.

She caught Hessel staring at her with a wistful gaze, as if he was realizing the same thing.

“Aren’t you going to try and stop me?” she questioned curiously. “I thought you’d have some last warning, some final plea.”

Hessel glanced out the window, considering her words. “No. No, I don’t. I know that when the time comes Ellis Beaufort will make the right choice. For him. For you. For Mistaken.”

He retreated, leaving Greer behind with an uneasy ache in her chest.