Page 53 of To Ride the Wind

“Actually, it’s not just from your bride price,” her mother interjected, sounding proud. “Although we were all shocked when the house suddenly grew around us.”

“Did it really?” Charlotte laughed at the image. “So my wish reached you after all.” She had seen the bell work often enough to guess how shocking it must have been for her family, coming without warning or context.

“But it was only a short time later that your father’s efforts to win his place with the valley elders finally bore fruit,” her mother continued. “Even if you hadn’t left us, our fortunes would have been looking up.”

Sorrow tinged the pride as she finished her words, and Charlotte could easily read the message behind it. They could have kept their daughter and had eventual wealth as well, even if not as much.

“Oh, Mother,” she whispered.

Her mother stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Charli,” she murmured back. “I failed you as a mother. I was tired and weak, and I thought our poverty was the root of all our problems. But once you were gone, I realized I could never enjoy luxury and ease that came at the expense of one of my daughters. I shouldn’t have let you go.”

Tears filled Charlotte’s eyes at the apology, but before she could reply, her mother continued.

“But that’s not all I have to be sorry for. I’ve spent so many weeks thinking of you and remembering the past, and I realized I failed you long before I sent you away. I’m sorry I let our home become such a painful place that you would marry a bear to escape it.”

Charlotte tried to smile, but her lips were trembling too much to manage it.

Her father slipped an arm around her mother’s shoulders, although his eyes stayed on Charlotte.

“I realize much of the blame is mine,” he said. “I moved us out here because it was what I wished. I convinced myself it could help you all, too, but that was only an excuse to justify what I wanted. When it took so much longer to establish ourselves than I expected, I should have moved us back to civilization.”

Charlotte shook her head, sniffing as she held back the tears. She hadn’t come home to hear their apologies, but their words healed something broken deep inside her.

“Be at peace, Mother and Father,” she murmured. “I accept your apologies, and I’m even glad we moved here, as difficult as it was. I am truly well, and I don’t regret my choice. If we hadn’t moved here, I never would have found Henry.”

Despite all the newfound pain, and the prospect that she might have to give Henry up in the future, she couldn’t wish away her love or her months with him. When she had left home, she had believed herself fully grown up. And in some ways, she had been. But now, after only a short time away, she understood better how much growth still lay before her. She had already experienced so many new emotions, and with them had come an understanding of her parents she had never expected to have.

She knew what it was to hurt someone despite your love for them—even because of it. It was clear that her unhappiness and her abrupt departure pained Henry. And yet, she had left anyway. She had done it not because she didn’t care about him but because of her emotional weakness. She needed space before she could discuss their future without heaping guilt and hurt on his head. And so she had chosen to leave not to cause him pain, but because it had seemed, in a collection of bad options, like the one that would hurt him the least.

She could see now that her father had only been doing the same thing. Faced with his daughter’s unhappiness, he had looked at the selection of bad options before them and nudged her toward the one he thought would cause the least pain. He hadn’t understood the true cause of her suffering—part of which came from him and his choices—and so he had worded himself badly. But as it turned out, he had been right about her potential for future happiness. So she couldn’t blame him now for doing his best.

The weight that lifted off her shoulders as she let go of the last of her resentment toward her parents lightened the pain she still felt over Henry, and her tears started flowing again.

“Charli?” Her father gazed at her with worry.

“They’re happy tears,” she managed to say, smiling from him to her mother. “I’m so glad to see you again. I didn’t realize how glad.”

“Come inside, come inside,” Elizabeth gushed, oblivious to the emotional exchange that had just taken place. “Let us show you all around our new house. It’s the nicest one in all the valleys, and everyone has come to admire it.”

“I was surprised to find you still here,” Charlotte said, entering the house in Elizabeth’s wake. “Weren’t you going to move to Arcadia?”

Odelia, who had followed them inside, pouted. “According to Father, the bear said we have to wait for that. But we’re going to move still!”

Charlotte frowned, wanting to ask her to explain further but knowing Odelia wasn’t the one with answers. Why had Henry told her family to wait?

Elizabeth began to show off elements of the house, but from the way she was preening and positioning herself, she clearly wanted a comment on the fine gown she was wearing. Charlotte bit back a smile and supplied it. She extended the compliment to Odelia who lit up in response. Her absence had forced her parents into self-reflection, but clearly the same wasn’t true of her sisters.

“Your gown is very nice, too, Charlotte,” Odelia said before leaning closer. “Wait, are those real gems?”

Charlotte glanced down. “Perhaps? You may have this one, if you like. I would prefer to borrow something plainer for my stay, if you have it.”

Elizabeth and Odelia locked eyes over Charlotte’s head, and she realized she might have spoken too carelessly. If her sisters understood the wealth she now enjoyed, would all their old resentment return?

“I would rather have my sisters than any gown,” she added brightly, and the tension passed.

Both her sisters smiled again, sweeping her inside to find her a change of clothes. She was paraded through every room in the house where she forced herself to dutifully admire everything. Her family really was living in comfort, and with her new forgiveness of them, the knowledge brought her joy instead of a surge of resentment.

But by the time she had seen every nook, been fed until she was bursting, met the three helpers who lived in the rooms attached to the stable, reassured her parents again of her husband’s kindness, and regaled her sisters with descriptions of her days spent reading, she felt as wrung out as the rag her mother was using to wipe the table.

---