Page 53 of Of Potions and Honey
Debt. This was a late notice for Uncle Lochlin’s loan payments – a loan he’d taken out for the shop. Cursing, Mira jumped out of her seat and hurried to retrieve the papers she’d gotten from Mr. Bowen what felt like an eternity ago. She sat back down and began rifling through the stack. She’d read them. Mostly. Some, she had skimmed, but she had looked at them all, at least. She couldn’t possibly have missed this.
In the middle of the stack, she found it. It looked just like everything else, with nothing to make it stand out as something she needed to pay special attention to. A very polite note informing her of the debt against Mr. Archer’s business,which would pass into her name upon her acceptance of the inheritance. Loan amount, monthly rate, interest, remaining balance – all listed neatly, mocking her and her air-headed stupidity.
How could she havemissedthis?
Turmoil in her stomach and a bead of sweat forming at the base of her neck, Mira stared at the papers, the note and the letter. Willed the numbers to change, the decimal point to move, anything. Because right now, the reality of it was crushing her, a sudden weight on her that made breathing difficult. She hadn’t known. Somehow, she had been dumb enough to miss this, and now the late notice was staring her in the face like an open maw. Between the missed payments and the late fees, she’d be lucky to have a penny left in her account after paying that. And then what? Go back home after all, and lose everything she’d allowed herself to hope she could have? She couldn’t. Not now, not when she was starting to feel so at home here. The mere idea of losing that sent a sob up of her burning throat.
Tears welling up, Mira put her head down on her folded arms. This was it. She’d missed this when she absolutely shouldn’t have, and now her own negligence would be a knife in her back. She’d have to sort this out, somehow. But damned if she knew how.
Twenty-Two
ThefollowingTuesday,Miraclosed the shop for a trip to the bank’s branch in Heartfield. Armed with the letter and a folder full of papers, she met with a somewhat sympathetic clerk, who had graciously given her an early appointment on the extremely short notice of Mira knocking on the door the minute he unlocked it. The man took his time to listen to her plight, awkwardly waited when she had to pause and collect herself lest she cry in front of this poor man who had done nothing wrong, and eventually walked her through her options, all of which ended on the same depressing note. At the end of the appointment, Mira left his office near tears, with her bank account close to empty, and no idea how to make this work. At least she had bought herself a month to come up with a plan, and the cancelled late fees at least left her with the tiniest amount of breathing room. It wasn’t much, and she was still faced with the crushing reality of a debt that would, for the foreseeable future, eat up any and all profits from her fledgling shop and then some.
What was she supposed to live off of, after all of that?
At least she still had her stories. Maybe she could make that work somehow. Though maybe it would be smarter to focus on the shop instead, to expand her stock and add some of the more complicated potions with a better profit margin. Though when she tried her hand at some of those, late into the night with shaking hands and burning eyes, she achieved nothing but a waste of ingredients that she couldn’t afford.
“Sod it!”
She tossed her stained apron into the laundry tub, wiped the tears from her stinging eyes, and stomped off to wash up. Which largely meant laboriously filling a bowl and wiping herself down with a washcloth, because the water still came in unreliable trickles, and tonight was no exception.
Too wound up to sleep but too frazzled to continue working on that damnable potion, Mira made herself a cup of tea and went to sit on the steps to her back porch. The view of her garden in the moonlight was stunning, and almost enough to make her cry again. She loved that garden. She loved the house. Loved Emberglen and its people and even the shop, frustrating and overwhelming as it could be at times. But now? She felt cornered. She might be able to keep up, for a while. But what if things got worse in the shop? What if she couldn’t afford the honey anymore, or the bottles? What if a big expense came up? One unexpected bill was all it would take, and she’d have nothing left.
Unless she acted first. She knew the disastrous state of the market in the area, but she didn’t have a mortgage to pay off. She could accept a lower price. Settle for the land value, if she had to. Maybe Golden River would be happy to snatch it up to put a new warehouse on it, to store more things that nobody here could afford in what was almost certainly an elaborate and of course perfectly legal tax evasion scheme. It might work, if she was lucky. It might get her just enough money to pay off thedebt and move back to Willow Harbour. Maybe she could stay at home for a bit, sleep on the sofa just until she found another job. Maybe Rue still wanted to move out, and they could find something small and cheap together.
Something that would remind Mira every day of what she could have had. If she’d just been less of an idiot. If she’d just paid some damn attention.
“Stupid,” she muttered, watching the grass rustle and sway in the back part of the garden. She had been so, so stupid. Mira sipped her tea, unable to find much joy in her favourite flavour. Of course it had all been too good to be true. She should have known, but she’d been blinded by all those things that had seemingly fallen perfectly into her lap over night. Why had she not questioned any of that?
Because of desperation. Because she had needed this escape from the emporium and its miserable drudgery under a boss who only cared about the monthly reports. Because she had blindly believed Uncle Lochlin’s letter, and his intentions. And he had probably expected her to know this! Expected her to act like a reasonable adult, not like a child distracted by a giant lollipop. A reasonable adult would have gone through all those papers twice with a fine-toothed comb. Instead, she had skim-read anything that hadn’t seemed important at the time, and now here she was.
At least a child would have had the excuse of not knowing how to read.
Despondent, Mira stared out at the moon-bleached garden. How long until she couldn’t hold on to this anymore? Was she just prolonging the inevitable? Maybe it would be better to get ahead of things, before she messed up her finances beyond repair.
“No!”
Her resolute declaration spooked some critter or other that skittered away in the high grass. Mira didn’t pay it any mind. No, she wouldnotgive up so quickly. She had made a new home here, new friends, maybe something else, too. She’d be damned if she gave that up without a fight.
“Sorry I’m late!” Mira took off her hat and shook out her hair. “I had a mishap in the shop that needed cleaning up.”
“Mhm.” Yoni watched as Mira scooted into the bench. “That’s been happening a lot recently, huh.”
Mira paused. “What?”
“I can smell it all the way across the street,” Yoni said dryly. “And Marigold refuses to go over when your kitchen stinks to high heaven.”
“Hey, it’s not that bad!”
“Or is it.”
Mira huffed. “Fine, maybe it is. It’s temporary though. I’m just trying to figure out some of the more advanced recipes.”
“Expanding your stock again?”
“Hopefully.” Loathe to get any deeper into the subject, Mira reached for the daily specials menu on the table. “What are we having today?”
Soon enough, a new hire balanced a tray to the table, with two cups of the ‘summer special’, a mix of lemon, mint, and firebloom that had sounded intriguing enough for Mira to pay a little extra. Not like it would make much of a difference right now. They waited patiently for the young man to unload the cups, politely ignored a miniscule spillage, and watched him hurry off to take another table’s order.
