Page 5 of Last Rites

“No rush, sir,” she said as she replaced the key on its hook. “Best place for breakfast is the baker’s stall at the market. She makes the most delicious sausage sandwiches. Sure to fill you up for your travels.”

I nodded my thanks and stepped out into the late morning sunshine. The market was a straight shot down the road, but my feet took me instead down the path across from the inn and past several rows of houses.

They looked nothing like the homes in Ashpoint. Where those were utilitarian, these were painted in half a dozen different colors, all warm and welcoming in their brightness. Two women hung washing on the line in the shared yard of their neighboring houses. Their laughter carried on the breeze as I passed. A few houses farther down the lane, a young girl chased a shaggy black dog in front of a modest white cottage.

I drew to a stop in front of a similar house at the end of the path, and a pang of longing throbbed in my chest. The front stoop was a sprawl of pots filled with flowers and herbs, and a fat yellow tabby stretched across the bottom step. Smoke curled from the chimney, and dark-stained shutters flanked the front windows like arms spread wide to welcome me home.

This hadn’t been home since I was a child, but I had a few faint, fond memories here. Sitting on that stoop enveloped in my mother’s embrace with the citrus smell of her soap curling around us. Running, shrieking with laughter, while my father chased me through this yard. Gathering with family around the dinner table, far too many people crammed into our tiny kitchen and yet not feeling overwhelmed by their presence. Joy and belonging and safety built this home into a foundation I’d largely forgotten after my father shattered it.

But years after I’d given up on ever having more than a meager, lonely existence, I found it again in Penny. He patched the cracks and filled the spaces that had been hollowed out by decades of destruction and neglect. He propped me up when I felt like collapsing in on myself. He made me feel like I deserved to be happy after all.

Like father, like son, apparently. I had everything I ever wanted, then went and re-broke what he destroyed twenty-five years before.

It had been a mistake to come here.

I hurried back the way I came and breathed a little easier when I reached the open air of the market. There was just enough hubbub there to chase away my self-pitying thoughts. Following the innkeeper’s directions, I made my way to the baker’s stall and stepped up to the counter.

The woman behind it beamed. Her graying brown hair was tucked behind her ears, and her eyes took on the golden hue of the light reflecting off her yellow apron.

“Morning,” she said. “What can I get you?”

My responding smile was genuine, though I couldn’t match her level of cheer. “I have it on good authority that you make the best biscuit sandwiches with sausage.”

“Do you, now?” Her eyes crinkled at the corners as her smile widened. “My husband will want to take credit for that, since he provides the sausage.” She leaned back to see around the side of her stall and into the next one. “You hear that, Mister Mosel? He’s here for one of the biscuit sandwiches.”

My heart flopped in my chest at the surname. When the man stepped into view beside his wife, I thought I recognized some of myself in his face, some family resemblance that seemed impossible just a few minutes before. But maybe it wasn’t so unbelievable that my cousin might move back to the town where he was born, not plagued by the memories of my mother that had driven our grandparents away.

“Best biscuits you’ll find in the ward,” the man said. “Best sausage, too, if I say so myself.”

“Mosel, you said?” The question escaped before I could stop it. I wanted to take it back, to leave without being remembered, but they were both looking at me too intently now to brush it off. “I knew a Mister Mosel once,” I continued. “Went by Kit.”

The other man perked up. “I had a cousin named Kit. He was a Koesters, though. Haven’t seen him since I was a child, so maybe he changed it.”

“Wouldn’t blame him,” the baker mumbled, “what with who his father was.”

My mouth went dry.

When Penny’s mother asked about my family, I’d claimed I didn’t have any. As best I knew, that had been the truth. Now, I knew differently, and the thought of not being the only one left was as comforting as it was painful. It meant that maybe, if at the end of all of this Penny wanted nothing to do with me, I had somewhere to go. There was a tether to the life I could have had and the man I could have been. An assurance that I wasn’t completely alone.

“Well,” the man continued as he bumped his wife with his elbow to keep her from saying anything further, “if you happen to see him again, tell him Willem said hello.” As his eyes searched my face, a wrinkle appeared between his brows.

For a second, I thought he recognized me, but the moment passed, and his expression smoothed. “And tell him to come home sometime. We’ve been strangers too long.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice around the lump growing in my throat, and handed over some coin in exchange for the paper-wrapped sandwich. I managed a smile, croaked out a quick thanks, then hurried toward the peace of the Veilwater.

My appetite was all but gone, so I tucked the sandwich in the top of my pack and followed the burbling river out of town to where it butted up against an ancient willow tree. Its trunk was twisted like an old man’s back, hunched over the small clearing beside the water and curtaining off my mother’s final resting place.

I paused before pushing past the hanging branches, afraid that I’d find the sunken depression of an empty grave instead of the stone my father and I had placed to denote where we buried her. There were a lot of things I could never forgive my father for, but that would be the worst of them.

Steeling myself for disappointment, I ducked into the shade and scanned the bed of moss beneath my feet. There, tucked against the base of the tree, a large river rock crowned a mound of earth.

My breath caught as I sank to my knees beside it.

“For as much as he hated me, at least he loved you enough to let you rest.”

I brushed the dirt and moss away from the stone, then dragged my fingertips over the initials carved there. Tears welled in my eyes, and I pressed the heel of my hand against them.

“Mom, I did a stupid thing.” A bitter laugh burst out of me. “I’ve done a lot of stupid things.”