Page 2 of Bittersweet & Strange

His fingers move absently across the edge of the advertisement.

“But we both know I’ll never make the journey.”

“That’s not true.”

He smiles at me, patient and unconvinced.

“Winter was hard on everyone,” I continue. “And the fair isn’t until next month. That’s four weeks. If we pack the carriage, Bramble can get you there without any trouble at all. I think it would be good for you to get out of the house.”

He shakes his head.

I ignore him.

“We’ll see how you feel in a few weeks.”

His gaze drops to the paper again. “Perhaps.”

I don’t expect anything to come from the conversation.

And then the days begin to pass.

The garden demands more of our attention with every sunrise. New shoots push through the soil. The fruit trees begin to bloom. The mountain air loses its sharp winter bite, and little by little, the world outside our cottage begins to wake.

So does my father.

The changes are small enough that I don’t recognize them at first.

He starts staying outside longer while I work in the garden, choosing the porch less often than the chair I’d placed underneath the dead apple tree. He begins finishing his meals instead of pushing half of them aside. The short walks that once left him exhausted gradually become longer, and I stop hearing the strain in his breathing every time he climbs the steps leading into the cottage.

Weeks pass.

The fair becomes something we mention casually over breakfast and while tending to the garden. At first, it feels like nothing more than wishful thinking.

Then I catch him in his workshop. Then again the following afternoon.

He begins cleaning his inventions. He sharpens his tools. He oils hinges that haven’t moved since autumn.

And although he never says it aloud, I begin to understand.

He wants to go.

By the third week, he’s walking farther than he has in months. By the fourth, he’s spending entire afternoons in the sunshine with his sleeves rolled to his elbows while he explains, in painstaking detail, how he intends to improve the seed planter he’d designed years ago.

I don’t tell him that I notice.

He doesn’t tell me that he knows.

The night before the fair, I find him sitting in his rocking chair on the porch, moving back and forth in a slow, steady rhythm while the last light of the day settles over the mountains.

I carry out a bowl of rabbit stew made from the rabbits I’d trapped earlier that afternoon and place it in his hands. He accepts it gratefully.

The air smells like fresh earth and pine trees. Somewhere nearby, water rushes over stones in a stream swollen with melting snow. Around us, crickets hidden among the tall grass begin their nightly song.

“Do you want me to load that seed planter you invented into the carriage?” I ask casually.

He looks up. His eyes are sparkling.

“Might as well.”