When he finally reached Stonehouses first frost had already set in, and the crystalline glow from the fields danced in the red sunrise as he approached, making the whole place look as if it were on fire. Around the lake district all was quiet, and he reached the house without disturbance or indication that anything was the matter on his farm.

He stabled the horse at a small outbuilding he had put up, which served as a barn, then walked the worn path to his door. Inside nothing stirred when he entered, and he touched the oven to see how long it might have been since Sanne went out. It was stone cold, and a fine dust covered its surface, but he cast about briefly for her anyway, before admitting she was nowhere on the place. He did not know what he would do about it, but knew whatever it was would have to wait until later in the day. He fired the stove then and made himself some porridge and a handful of okra, as he was used to from his days alone there.

He had never considered his and Sanne’s rows a thing to be worried about, but as an elemental part of the working conflict of creation. He was concerned, though, as he went out to the barn and fed the wan-looking animals, that he might have disturbed the very base of relations between the two of them. He returned and finished boiling water for a wash, savoring the hot cloth across his dirty, tired face, then bedded down for a spell — collapsing from the demands of the journey just passed. He had returned a full day quicker than it took him to go there, but when he added the time he was away, almost two weeks, he realized he had been far and gone indeed.

* * *

When he woke from his rest, he checked on the horse and decided to let the creature continue sleeping as he went on his errands. “You’re no Potter,” he said, slapping the gelding’s shank. “Potter would’ve — well, never mind what Potter would have done.”

He gave the beasts new hay, bundled himself in warm clothing, and set out on foot for the town center. When he reached Content’s place, exhausted from the trek, he hollered around back before going inside, where he found his friend at the bar.

“Sanne here?”

“Mad at you a bit.”

“But here?”

“Since three days. Scary out there by herself.”

Content did not say anything else to accuse him, and Merian did not feel the need to explain himself. All the same, he told his friend, “I came from somewhere too, Content. Just like you and Dorthea and Sanne and that little boy. I came from somewhere that didn’t just dry up and disappear when I left.”

“Still, scary out there at night by herself,” Content said, pulling a pint and placing it before Merian.

“I appreciate your looking after them.”

“Nothing of it.”

“Will she see me?”

“We can try and find out.”

Content went out back and upstairs to the main living quarters, returning after fifteen minutes and nodding to Merian from the doorway. Merian rose and removed his hat, going the way his friend had just come from, as Content went back to the bar.

When he entered the room Dorthea said hello cordially before withdrawing to help Content in the tavern.

“I had business to attend,” he said preemptively. “I had put it off already, and put it off, but it was getting older and older until it couldn’t wait anymore.”

“Did you bring her back with you?” Sanne asked, staring directly at him. “Is she out there at my home right now?”

“No, Sanne,” he answered her. “There is no one else there, nor will there ever be.”

Still, she would not return with him that evening, and it took almost a week of negotiations before she would go back to Stonehouses at all. When she finally did, she reminded him at every opportunity what it was like to sit waiting for him those first two days after he disappeared, after she had put two and one together to figure what he had done.

He bore the recrimination silently, knowing it would eventually die down and be replaced by some other passion. In due course this proved correct, when she turned her attention back to Purchase, gathering him up in her arms. “Why, I bet he hardly recognizes you anymore,” she said, without looking at her husband.

Merian’s face deflated, and she witnessed then the same look she had noticed when he was courting her, and wondered again whether he was not a man cursed with sadness. But Merian simply began playing with Purchase, speaking to him softly, until they were all at ease. His only remark to Sanne then was to ask whether the boy had grown in the brief time he was away. “Didn’t anybody comment on his size when you were staying in the town?” he asked.

“Just that it proves country air beats all else for raising little ones,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with him, Merian, he just aims to be tall, as you should know.”

All the same, Merian took to measuring Purchase with a ruler to mark how much was adding on from month to month that winter, and then from season to season and year to year after that, until it was generally acknowledged that he was the tallest person, man or boy, in the colony.

The strife that had befallen husband and wife that winter, though, was not the last discord in their house, or even the last over that particular subject, but it was the end of serious conflicts. They settled in again as a unit that winter that would survive whatever was given them, understanding that they might disagree at times but would not divorce their union.

Deprived of one, his dedication to the other child continued to strengthen and served increasingly as the bond between them — so that when he added a second-floor attic to the house, he did not say to Sanne, I think this will be good for us, but rather, “Purchase might someday appreciate it if the house had a second story.”

For his part Purchase continued the business of growing up, now infant, now crawling, now toddler pulling the bread down from the table, until one of his parents would take him up. As he matured and began to express interests of his own, less tolerant of whatever Merian and Sanne put before him for amusement.

Wooden blocks he found satisfying, but only when he banged them together with all the force of his fat arms. Shapes made against the wall were dull, no matter what form or what noise was made to accompany them. Birds, however, he thought intriguing and would lie in waiting when they flew into the yard around the house, before pouncing, making them scatter briefly just beyond his reach.

Near his eighth birthday, when he was old enough to go about independently, Merian began to take him on the rounds of the farm, but the boy showed no interest in any creature save the chickens and the geese, who swam out on the lake in summer. After his father released him from his chores, he would go lie in the meadow where Ruth Potter was buried to stare at the falcons as they circled the sky in search of an evening meal.

When he returned home at night, Merian would invariably chide him for his laziness, warning what tribulations that particular path held.

To break him of bad habits and daydreaming, Merian tried to instill respect for laboring in the fields, taking him at his side and pointing out how each crop was grown and what they received for each thing there. At harvesttime, he took the boy to market with him, to learn from his bartering; he would produce then a crude tally sheet of the hours Purchase had helped him, and count out two coins, which he gave to him before they entered Content’s free house. “A man should always be paid for his work,” Merian said, giving the boy his monies. “There is no exception ever to be made to that.”

Purchase’s eyes lit when he received his pay, and he pocketed it, promising to save and add to it until he could use it for something worthy. Merian rubbed the boy’s shoulder and pulled up to the bar, where Content greeted them both.