Page 55 of Of Potions and Honey
She was gone so quickly that Mira didn’t even make it out of the bench before Yoni was out the door and out of sight. Now people really were staring, and she shrunk back into her seat, cheeks hot, head in her hands. Great. Fantastic. She’d screwed that up good and proper, hadn’t she. She should’ve deflected. Pretended that everything was fine. But that kind of thing was its own poison. If things weren’t going to be fine, then what? She’d still have to come clean, it just would be worse.
None of that madethishurt any less though.
She sat there, staring at the table and rethinking her life choices, until someone gently cleared their throat next to her. It was Clara’s son.
“Is, uh. Everything all right? Do you want another cup?” He awkwardly gestured at the tea. “It looks cold.”
Mira tiredly shook her head. “No, I’m good, thank you. Can I just pay?”
She left the half empty cups on the table as she headed outside. Of course Yoni was nowhere to be seen. She’d probably gone straight home. Which meant that Mira was liable to run into her if she went, too, and that idea was extremely unappealing right now. She badly wanted to talk, to explain, to justify, but that wouldn’t do any good right now. Best to let Yoni cool off and try to talk later. Until then, Mira went down to the village green to sulk to her heart’s content, and maybe have a little cry in a quiet corner about the fact that her life, new and fragile as it was, was falling apart so quickly, and there seemed to be so little she could do about it.
Twenty-Three
Onceagain,Yoniseemedto be doing her very best to avoid Mira, and this time, Mira couldn’t even blame her for that. Even when Mira came to buy ingredients, she refused to open the door, though a box of her usual order appeared on her doorstep when Mira went outside in the morning, along with a very impersonal invoice. Mira took it inside with a knot in her chest. At least Yoni wasn’tthatpetty, though maybe Mira did deserve it. She knew, after all, Yoni had told her herself. And she’d gone and put selling and moving on the table right away, like it had been such an easy thing to consider. She doubted that Yoni would believe her if she tried to explain that it really, really wasn’t. And if she wanted space that badly… Well, Mira wasn’t about to go trampling that boundary.
At least Marigold still came around every now and again, mostly to accept her customary ear scritches and then go off and hunt the mice living in the grass in the back of the garden. For a brief, wild moment, Mira considered attaching a letter to the cat, though she immediately discarded that idea. At best, Yoni would receive chewed-up scraps, and she couldn’t imagine Marigoldforgiving her for the grave insult of treating her like a glorified carrier pigeon. Even if treats were involved.
So Mira kept waiting, watching, and wondering if she could somehow salvage the situation, though she didn’t have the faintest idea how to even begin to do that, now that this threat hung in the air between her and Yoni. Of leaving her just like her fiancé had.
So she stewed in the consequences of her blabbermouth, of her negligence, and too much work as she kept trying, and only somewhat succeeding, to figure out how to make this potion business work in a way that would allow her to keep the house and stay in a place where she had been, for the first time in years, truly happy.
It was on one such day, after hours of trying to perfect a concoction that would help with the flu in the autumn, that Kayden came by to knock some sense into her. Well, chiefly he was there to restock her ice box. Though seeing as she was the last stop on his tour, he seemed to have no problem inviting himself – and Poppy – to stay in her kitchen afterwards, where he sat down at the table, folded his arms in front of him, and gave her a certain kind of look that Mira did not like at all.
“What?”
“Areyougoing to tell me what on Earth happened? Because I asked Yoni, and she only told me that she made a mistake, and to mind my own damn business.”
Nostrils flaring, Mira leaned against the counter. “So you figured you’d immediately go and ask me.”
“Not immediately. I did my deliveries first.” He raised an eyebrow. “So? Are you going to tell me why you haven’t spoken a word to each other in almost two weeks?”
After a moment, Mira looked away. “There isn’t much to say. I messed up, said something I shouldn’t have said, and she decided I wasn’t worth keeping around after all.”
“Really. Care to tell me what that was, that she decided to break off the first relationship she’s even considered since that pompous dolt broke her heart?”
Mira glanced up at him. “Are you trying to figure out if you should stop talking to me, too?”
The eyebrow just inched a little higher. Mira huffed.
“Fine. I got a damn letter from a damn bank. I owe them a lot of money because Uncle Lochlin took out a loan, and I was too stupid to read my papers correctly so I wasn’t aware of that. I thought about selling the house to pay it off, and maybe moving back home, if I couldn’t figure out another way to fix the situation. Yoni took umbrage with that, and quite frankly, I don’t blame her all that much, considering the aforementionedpompous dolt.” She glared at Kayden. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
There was a look of uncomfortable surprise on his face. “Sort of? I mean, I didn’t particularly want to hear that you’re having money troubles, actually.” He leaned forward. “Are you… doing all right?”
“I’m doing all right enough for know.” With a heavy sigh, Mira sat down at the table. Poppy promptly scooted over to use her feet as a pillow, which made her smile despite herself as she peered under the table to be met with an innocent look from forest green eyes. “Wretched creature.”
“Woof.”
“Sure.” Mira leaned on the table, focusing on Kayden again. “It’s not as bad as she probably thinks. I’m not a week away from having the house foreclosed on and getting on a train back to Willow Harbour. I just… I thought about it, you know? A last resort kind of thing.”
“I get it. But you know what that sounded like to her, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” Mira frowned. “It’s not like I want to go back. I don’t miss it, the terrible work hours, my boss who always found something to complain about, the awful pay. I like it here! I want to stay!” She raked a hand through her hair. “I don’t want to go back to working for Golden River and selling shoes and shawls and self-mixing bowls that don’t work and apparently also bottled water now! I’d rather-”
She abruptly fell silent when her own mind caught up with her words.
“I get that,” Kayden said. “I really do. It’s just that Yoni’s pretty hurt right now, and-”
“The water.”
