Page 8 of Of Potions and Honey
“Just don’t make me send it now and then bring it all back half a year from now when you decide to close the shop after all.”
No, Mira had assured her through gritted teeth and with much more conviction than she had felt, she would not do that. She planned on making this work. The dubious looks from her parents had been answer enough.
Not that they were wrong. She still wasn’t quite sure what had driven her to quitting a perfectly good, if somewhat boring, job to move several hours away on the request of a dead man whom she hadn’t seen in close to two decades. Madness, quite possibly, not that Mira would admit that out loud.
“You know, this is a little bit crazy.”
Well. Rue had no such problem, it seemed. She put a box down with a quiet ‘oof’. Books, then.
“I do wish I had the guts to do that,” she continued. “It sounds so nice, living in a cottage and stirring a bubbling cauldron… maybe have a shop cat, too, that would be so adorable!”
“I don’t think you know how potions work, do you,” Gemma teased her. Rue rolled her eyes.
“Oh, come on, don’t be like that. MiraknowsI’m joking, right?”
Mira forced a smile, which from the glance her friends shared was anything but reassuring.
“I know. I have…” She faltered. “Well, I did some research. Since the shop was willed to me, I can just renew all the permits. There are the shop records I can work off of. And I have the recipe book. I used to help out Uncle Lochlin when I was little, too. It never seemed that difficult.”
“See?” Rue threw an arm around Mira. “And if it was, he would never have asked, anyway. He knew you’d be just fine, that’s why he gave you the house.”
That remained to be seen, but Mira nodded along regardless. Right now, she needed all the help she could get to actually go through with this plan, if one could call a hastily put together sequence of barely connected steps a plan. If she chickened out now, she didn’t know what to do with herself. Never mind the ubiquitous ‘I told you so’s’ from her parents. No, she wasnotgoing to expose herself to that.
“I know I will. It’ll just take a little bit of time, that’s all.”
“Are you sure you don’t need any help setting this all up?” Gemma worried her bottom lip. “I could take a few days off and come with you.”
It was the third time she made that offer, bless her, and it got more tempting every time. Still, Mira shook her head.
“No, thank you. There’s not much to do right away. Just lots of checking on things and making lists and… stuff.”
All right, that sounded more pathetic than she had intended, and Gemma did not look convinced. Rue, at least, looked much less concerned.
“Well, you just let us know if you need a second pair of hands. Or a third. We’ll come out and help. It’ll be fun!” She squeezed Mira’s shoulders. “So. If we’re done here, how much time until your train leaves?”
“At three, why?”
“In that case, we have time for lunch.” Rue grinned. “My treat. I’m not going to let you leave hungry.”
Mira suspected she would refuse to listen to any promises that Mira wasn’t actually hungry. Or, more to the point, too nervous to eat. Besides, she did have a few hours left, and only an empty apartment to spend them in. She wouldn’t particularly miss the place; between the rusty pump in the courtyard that made the water taste like copper, the creaky floors in the hallway, and the tram rumbling past outside at all hours of the day, its only saving grace had been the low rent. Until now, anyway. Perhaps she could take her leave a little early. Take her mind off things, and stop thinking about how utterly embarrassing it would be if she completely bungled this endeavour.
“All right then. Lunch it is.”
When she finally boarded the train to Heartfield, Mira was only crying a little bit. By the time the train pulled out of the station and picked up speed, she felt mostly like herself again. One last flutter of nerves as she looked out the window. No turning back now – she would be giving this a try, no matter what.
She barely had the time in Heartfield to go and pick up a bit of food before she just about managed to catch the carriage to Emberglen. A bumpy hour and a half later, the carriage eventually deposited her in Emberglen’s town square. It was almost dark, and the gas lamps appeared to be flickering even worse than last time. With it being a Thursday, the inn was already closed for the night, and nobody else was out and about. Even the fountain, too ostentatious for the place with its three levels and the slightly lumpy honey comb on top, was shut off today. Feeling as lonely as she rarely had in her life, Mira picked up her bag and suitcase and made her way back up to the house. On foot. Of course.
Herhouse. It still felt strange to think about. Not something she had seen in her future any time soon. Perhaps if she ever got married, which seemed alarmingly unlikely after the disastrous end to her relationship with Lionel and the string of terrible first dates that had followed. Not like this though. Not at all. And certainly not this far away from everything and everyone she knew. She really should have thought that through just a little bit, though admittedly she’d somewhat lacked the time and awareness to do that in the heat of the moment. And not like she could go back now and change that, could she, even if she wanted to.
The windows were all dark when she approached, and as she wove her way through the overgrown front garden, the weeds seemed to have gotten so much taller. Already, Mira was half a dozen items down a mental list of things that would need doing before she could even begin to think about re-opening the shop. Starting with the most involved deep-clean of her entire life.
For now, though, all she could think about was dinner and sleep. She had some bread and jam, and three slightly bruised pears for half off. That would probably be a theme for a good long time. She had so little in savings, and now no income to rely on, her budget was looking… somewhat strict. That sounded better than ‘depressing’.
At the front door, Mira decided to push all that to the side. She’d spent enough time lying awake at night worrying about that, and everything else. Now, she turned the key in the lock, shoved the door open, and marched inside, where she stopped in the middle of the empty hallway to drop her suitcase and put her hands on her hips.
“All right, Uncle Lochlin,” she declared to the empty house, herself, and the spiders in the corners, hoping that, if she said it out loud, it would keep her from turning tail and running back to Willow Harbour first thing in the morning. “I’ll give it a shot.”
Five
