Page 87 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
“They’ve had their chance,” Samson disagrees. “Just like we did, David. Our kids are adults now, and they’re there. They should know.”
Poe’s father sighs. “Yes.”
“Dad,” Poe says, “just tell us. We already—” She stops at Rebecca’s expression of panic. Right. Their dads don’t need to know everything. Definitely not the naked parts. “We’ve already guessed a lot of it. We know that you were all, um, polyamorous.”
“Really?” Delphine asks, sitting up straighter. “I didn’t know that!”
Rebecca, meanwhile, looks like she wishes her chair would eat her alive. Poe can commiserate.
“But we don’t have to talk about that part,” Poe says quickly. “I just want to know the rest of what happened and why you were there.”
Her father takes a drink, definitely for courage, and then after a moment, he starts.
“It began innocently, believe it or not,” he says. “That year—the year we all stayed there—Adelina and I were in the country for a conference in Bristol. Poe, you were staying with my parents, and we decided to take a few days before the event and explore a little, see some of the places your mother had been as a student. We went to Kernstow Farm, and we hiked around the tors, and then we went to Thorncombe. They were celebrating May Day.”
“Beltane,” Delphine says.
David nods, and if he’s surprised his daughter’s friend knows about Beltane, he doesn’t show it. “Ralph was there too, presiding over the celebrations. Your mother—she was never shy—when she recognized him, she went up and re-introduced herself. After she mentioned her family came from the valley originally, that she was a Kernstow, he was so friendly. So charming. He invited us to come to Thornchapel, where he’d be hosting a small May Day celebration of his own.”
“So you just went with a stranger to a strange house in order to go to a mysterious celebration?” Poe asks. It sounds like something she would do, not her fussy, bookish dad.
“Your mother had been there before,” David points out. “And I am a professor of religious studies. It seemed like a privilege to be invited, and anyway, your mother and I always tried to say yes to new experiences. Just a few years before, some Polish friends of ours invited us to their village’s Dozhynki festival, and your mother helped make the wreath—”
Samson puts his hand on David’s knee with the affection of someone familiar with his tangents. David clears his throat. “Ah, sorry. Story for another time.”
“So you went to Thornchapel on Beltane,” Poe says. “And were you there, Mr. Quartey?”
Samson shakes his head. “Not yet.”
“Ingram and Helena were though,” David says, looking at Becket.
“And my parents?” Delphine asks.
David nods.
Poe doesn’t want to know. Except she kind of does.
Except she definitely doesn’t.
Except—
Delphine puts everyone out of their misery. “Did you all have sex that night?” she asks, tilting her head.
Poe’s father blushes a little above his stubble. He pushes his glasses up his nose. “Well . . . ”
“Dad! You’d only just met them that day! What the hell?”
“Poe, don’t slut-shame your father,” chides Delphine.
“I’m not slut-shaming—”
“You are a little,” Becket says.
“I think,” Samson cuts in calmly, “your father was explaining how Ralph came to invite your parents to stay for the summer.”
“Right,” David says, shooting Samson a grateful look. “So your mother and I had a lovely time that night—”
“Ew,” Poe says.
