by Trish Mercer
Jaytsy wanted to do nothing more than thrown her arms around him again, but still unsure of what to do with the familiarity they’d accidentally created, she instead just patted his hand. “They’re still here,” she whispered. “I need to go home. Will you be all right or would you like me to come back later?”
Still not looking at her, he smiled faintly. “I’ll be fine. I actually feel a lot better now. Glad you forgot your hat and had to come back.” He elbowed her gently, and it felt almost brotherly.
Something in Jaytsy’s heart sank, and everything about that moment became immensely awkward. She’d been so forward, so affectionate, so motherly—oh, dear . . . Of course he didn’t have any other way to respond except with an elbow nudge.
Jaytsy got to her feet, patted him one more time on the shoulder, and said, “See you tomorrow, Deckett,” before trotting back home, wiping her face all the way.
---
It took Deckett several minutes before he pulled himself to his feet. After drying his face with various sleeves and shirt tails, he made his way up the back stairs to the kitchen again.
Just as he had the hour before, he opened the door and called, “Mother, Father?” He smiled tentatively at the silent house, unsure if they were indeed there but feeling a sense of peace nonetheless, so thick it was tangible.
“I just wanted to tell you something . . . I think I found her.”
And he wasn’t talking about the missing calf.
---
Jaytsy had gone home that evening sullen and worried, not because of her or Deckett’s grief, but because she feared she’d crossed too many lines too quickly and she didn’t know how to backtrack to where she’d left off. She decided by morning, as she headed again to the farm, that she’d say nothing of their closeness the day before.
She watched for Deckett’s reaction to her when she found him opening the canal. He flashed her a smile. “Before we tackle the potato section, the peppers need harvesting again along with some tomatoes. The assistant cooks from the fort will be here before midday meal to retrieve them. They also wanted some onions, and I’ll need to move the cattle to a different pasture. So where do you want to start?”
Jaytsy, in the manner that she inherited from her mother that read too much into a situation, decided that his, Where do you want to start? signified asking how she wanted to proceed after yesterday. Later, she realized he probably was just referring to the farm, but she felt safe in saying, “What do you think we should do first?”
He shrugged as he turned the spigot to adjust the water flow. “Tomatoes, then peppers and onions. Everything else later.”
She mulled that Everything else later for hours, sure that he intended a double meaning although she wasn’t entirely sure what everything else referred to, and when later might be.
For the next few weeks they labored side by side, never mentioning the afternoon when they sobbed together, never becoming more intimate than an elbow bump or a hand brush. They weeded and watered and harvested until all too soon there were only two days before school began again and the farm was as finished as it could be.
Much to Jaytsy’s displeasure.
Deckett seemed disappointed as well as they stood up before midday meal and looked at the perfectly thinned and weeded rows extending all the way to the northernmost canal before the forest.
“Good work,” he said with strained brightness. “I guess . . . there’s nothing left for you to do here now that the crops are taking over most of the dirt. It’ll take me only an hour or so to pull what the fort wants each day. Then again, in another week there should be some more weeds again. Those will take a couple of hours’ work.”
“There’s the full harvest!” Jaytsy reminded him. “That will take weeks!”
“Not for another moon or so,” he said dully.
“We could have an early midday meal together,” Jaytsy suggested.
“We could.”
But even though they ate slowly, too soon that was over as well. Jaytsy stood uncomfortably on the back door steps with him knowing it was time to leave. But because she didn’t know when she’d be back, she desperately tried to think of some way to still see—
“Dinner!”
“What?”
“You should come to dinner tonight. My mother’s been saying she wanted to invite you over. I guess she talked to you after the congregational meeting last Holy Day and heard some of the things you were making for yourself.”
Deckett chuckled softly. “Mothers always think you need something more than meat and potatoes.” His chuckle fell away and his face contorted in sorrow which he tried to hide by kicking at some gravel by his feet.
It was the first time in weeks Jaytsy had seen that level of grief in him, and her arms actually rose up in a desire to hug him, but she forced them down. They were in full sight of the main road, after all, and a group of soldiers walked by just a few dozen paces away on their way to patrol the village.
But Jaytsy felt safe in gripping Deckett’s arm. “Please join us tonight?”
He looked up hesitantly, quickly wiping his nose with his sleeve. “Only if it’s all right with your mother.”
“Oh, it will be! I’m sure,” she assured him, holding his bicep firmly and not wanting to let it go. “My father missed chatting with you last week and I know he wanted to see you again.”
“He’s very . . . diligent,” Deckett said. Nervously, she noticed.
“Is that all right?”
“Oh, absolutely,” he said, a bit more easily. “It’s just that sometimes I get the feeling that he’s . . . watching me.”
Jaytsy giggled. “He does, but don’t worry about him. I think he actually likes you!”
Deckett’s shoulders relaxed. “And that’s good, right?”
“Oh, yes!”
---
“Jayts,” Perrin murmured, “how long are you going to hold on to his arm? He’s going to need it back sometime.”
He loosened the bolt on the spyglass, realizing that they were about to walk again.
“Farm looks great, guess that means this is the end to weeding for a while? Oh dear . . . maybe she’s hoping . . . Deckett, you’re right in full view of the main fort road, you know. And me, but we won’t get into that. So if you’re going to kiss her, then at least make some pretense for taking her to the barn or something . . . Wait. She’s leaving. And . . . she doesn’t look too happy about that . . . No, wait, she’s smiling. I don’t get it.”
He readjusted the glass. “And Deckett, you’re just watching her . . . watching her walk away . . . and . . . suddenly you look nervous. And now you’re looking . . . up here!”
Perrin sat back quickly, almost embarrassed.
“You can’t see into the windows from where you are. I know—I’ve checked.” He sighted in the young farmer again. Deckett was still gazing at the fort tower but now massaging his hands anxiously. He clapped them once as if coming to some kind of conclusion and turned to go to the barn.
Perrin sat up again, thoughtful. “I think it’s time we had you over for dinner.”
---
“We really shouldn’t be doing this,” Mahrree murmured later that evening as she and Perrin stood in the kitchen. “I feel guilty, spying like this.”
“It’s not spying,” he whispered back. “Our daughter is on the porch talking to a young man, and we need to make sure everything is . . . fine.”
“But they’ve been saying goodbye for the past 15 minutes, and it’s growing quite dark and I think they know we’re here—”
“No, they don’t,” said Perrin confidently.
But Mahrree didn’t believe him, and she suspected he was hoping to see something happen.
Deckett had come over for dinner, a bit warily, and had spent the last three hours growing more at ease and less anxious as the evening wore on. He laughed uproariously at Peto, who he clearly thought was the funniest teenager alive—which irked Jaytsy but thoroughly won over Peto. He listen
ed attentively to Perrin’s description of the attack of Moorland, commenting occasionally about the structures he remembered, and frequently watched Jaytsy with what Mahrree was sure was bashful adoration.
She couldn’t have approved more heartily, especially when Deckett grew teary-eyed that her biscuits tasted just like his mother’s had.
And now Jaytsy stood at the back porch door talking with Deckett who held the door open as he stood halfway out of it. They kept finding “Oh-remembers,” and “I-forgot-to-tell-yous,” punctuated with Jaytsy’s giggles and Deckett’s deeper chuckles.
Perrin kept edging closer to the kitchen door that was open a crack, allowing them glimpses of their daughter and her friend on the porch, but Mahrree nudged him backward into the shadows that hid them well.
“I can’t hear what he’s saying,” Perrin murmured in her ear.
“We’re not supposed to be hearing. We’re just watching,” she whispered back.
“That’s not good enough.”
“They’ll hear you. Be quiet!”
“Just one step closer. It’s darker now. They won’t notice.”
Mahrree sighed and let him noiselessly closer. He really was very good at that, she had to admit. She leaned forward to look at his face in the growing dark, and he was smiling.
“Cows!” he whispered and shook his head.
Mahrree snuck up to him, almost as noiselessly, to listen in.
“I suppose you could help,” Deckett was saying. “I hadn’t considered using a female voice.”
“It would be perfect!” Jaytsy squealed. “Divide the cows into three groups. One group hears no voice, the other a man’s voice, the other a woman’s voice.”
Mahrree wondered briefly who the “woman’s voice” would belong to, then winced to realize her daughter was the woman.
“I like it,” Deckett said and chuckled. “What if we did an experiment where we said only angry things to the cows, then another where we said only sweet things?”
“Sweet talk a cow?” Jaytsy asked dubiously.
“It’s not as uncommon as you might think. Life for a rancher gets pretty lonely, Jayts.”
She giggled.
Perrin groaned quietly.
Mahrree jabbed him in the ribs. “That was funny! Not sappy at all,” she whispered to her husband.
“Please tell me we were never that awkward,” he murmured.
“They’re not awkward. And we were far worse. Don’t you remember, Mr. Icouldloveawomanlikeyou?”
His shoulders shook in a silent laugh as he remembered his first profession of love for her. “But I’ve never kissed a man before!” he whispered, mimicking her panic when he first tried to kiss her.
She clutched his arm and stifled a snort in his shirt sleeve.
“How often would you need me to come by?” they heard Jaytsy ask Deckett.
“Oh, every day after school. Take Holy Day off. We could have your brother come, too. He’s really funny.”
Jaytsy must have been rolling her eyes.
“He could record the results,” Deckett added.
Jaytsy sighed.
“Oh, I like this boy!” Perrin whispered to his wife. “Good young man, building in a chaperone.”
“What will we do when the experiments are done?” Jaytsy asked.
“There are always more,” Deckett assured her. “We could try to test why cattle run from your father.”
Jaytsy laughed. “I think it’s because his favorite food is steak. They must see it in his eyes or something.”
“See? We could keep busy until Planting Season comes again next year.”
“So you are staying?”
“Where else would I go?”
“Last week you mentioned going back to the university.”
“Oh. Yes. Actually, I seem to have forgotten about that. I could always go the next year I suppose . . .”
“Or you could always just stay here.” Jaytsy leaned further out of the open door.
Deckett took a hesitant step closer. “I could.”
“Because Deck, I don’t know what I’d do if you left,” she whispered, and several paces behind her parents leaned ludicrously to eavesdrop.
“Well Jayts, I don’t know where I’d rather be.”
Mahrree realized she was holding her breath with anticipation for what might come next.
Until she was overwhelmed with guilt.
She stepped back quickly and pulled her husband along.
“Hey!” he snarled in a whisper as she dragged him into the eating room. “What are you doing? I think he was just about to ki—”
“We shouldn’t be spying.”
“I’m her father, I’m supposed to be! And it’s not spying!”
Mahrree gave him a stinging look.
Perrin gave it back.
“Think back,” she told him. “Remember how everyone watched us? Remember that last debate? Someone said they’d never had so much fun watching a courtship?”
Perrin’s eyes began to soften, reluctantly. “Yes,” he finally sighed. “But Jaytsy and Deckett didn’t know we were there.”
She squeezed his arm. “I really like him, Perrin. He’s so good for her—I feel it. Jaytsy’s been so happy these past weeks, and she glows when she talks about him. There’s definitely affection between them.”
“But is the affection born out of the shared grief of missing the Briters?” Perrin said. “So when the grief subsides, so does the attachment?”
“I’ve wondered that myself,” Mahrree admitted. “But I don’t think so. They work side by side every day. They’re now managing the entire farm and dairy all by themselves. Obviously they work very well together, which suggests to me an even better chance of them staying together.” Something inside of Mahrree grew hot and anxious realizing that maybe—just maybe—this was it.
“So he’s grown fond of her because of the way she picks peas.” Perrin raised one eyebrow dubiously.
“Better than the reason for which I grew fond of you—arguing with me.”
He bobbed his head. “But she’s still so young, Mahrree.”
“I know, but only in body,” she assured him. “In mind she’s matured at least a decade since the land tremor.”
“True,” he murmured.
“Perrin, I didn’t think something like would happen for another few years yet, but he’s such a good man. And I don’t want us, or anyone, to mess anything up for them. Even if it means that you back off a bit.”
He nodded grudgingly. “I will . . . stop spying. As much.”
When they heard Jaytsy come through the kitchen to the gathering room, they turned expectantly to her.
“What?” she asked, her eyes darting between the two of them as if worried they may have witnessed something that she didn’t want them to see. There was a slight blush to her cheeks that Mahrree was sure was also on her face after Captain Perrin Shin smashed that first clumsy kiss on her mouth.
“Nothing! Nothing,” Mahrree assured her, unable to keep the corners of her mouth from lifting into a smirk. “So he’s headed home, then?” Her voice was unnaturally high.
Jaytsy smiled back and blushed deeper.
Yep, Mahrree thought. First kiss. She glanced at Perrin who, judging by the slight furrowing of his eyebrows, was looking for evidence of one as well, but wasn’t seeing it yet. Mahrree would fill him in later. Maybe.
“Yes, he’s on his way home,” Jaytsy said, admirably in control of her voice, but not her flushed cheeks. “Thank you for letting him come over. He gets lonely there.”
“He’s welcome here any time, Jayts,” Perrin said. “I like him.”
Whatever resolve Jaytsy had acquired before she faced her parents dissolved at her father’s words. She broke out into a huge grin, glanced at her mother with a look of something like triumph, and rushed to her father and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you!”
When she ran to her bedroom, Perrin turned to Mahrree. “What was that all about?”
Mahrree eyes were wet. She knew exactly what Jaytsy was thinking: whomever her father liked, she was free to love.
“When this is all over, I’ll tell you, Perrin. I don’t want you to mess anything up.”
---
“So, I was wondering, sirrr,” Radan said to Thorne, “do you think your mother might mention me to your father or grandfather?”
They were walking across the compound before midday meal when Radan blurted the question that made Thorne scowl.
“Because I did do quite a bit for her while she was here. Took her to the market many times, walked her past the Shins’ home—she didn’t believe me that they lived in something so dumpy—and acted as her personal servant for two weeks. Perhaps she may remember me fondly to the generals?”
Thorne sneered. “Why in the world would they care?”
“Because sirrr, you’ve said I should make my name known to those who have influence. There’s no family with more influence than the Cushes and Thornes. Not even the Shins, now. I was . . . I was trying to follow your advice, sirrr,” he finished pathetically.
Thorne sniggered to himself that Radan wasn’t clever enough to not tell the officers he was trying to manipulate what he was doing. That’s when he spied her, walking briskly to the command tower with a pair of boots in her hand. The colonel must have been planning another race and forgot his running boots at home.
He cleared his throat loudly, and Jaytsy Shin stumbled in her gait. She glanced at Lemuel who tipped his cap roguishly to her. She briefly nodded back, never acknowledging Radan, and broke into a jog to the open doors of the command tower.
Thorne chuckled.
“Sirrr,” Radan cleared his throat, “I don’t know why bother. She’s clearly not interested. You could have anyone else.”
“Of course I could,” Thorne said. “But obviously you don’t get it: she’s his daughter, Radan.”