The Boy and His Ribbon (The Ribbon Duet, #1)(23)

Nothing.

No furniture, no people, no knickknacks or signs of inhabitants.

It was abandoned.

And ours for the taking.

The front door was unlocked as I strolled in with shoulders braced and knife at the ready. I explored the three bed, one bath wooden farmhouse, doing my best not to see similarities with the Mclary’s home but struggling.

The lounge was big with a large stain on the hardwood floor, hinting a coffee table had once lived there and someone had spilled something. The bathroom was peeling yellow with soap scum embedded in the claw foot bath. And the bedrooms were sad with their drooping curtains and mouse skeletons.

But it was dry, mostly weather tight, and had one queen mattress leaning against a wall in the third bedroom.

My thoughts turned to Della and getting her comfortable enough to fight the fever and stuffiness in a cosy bed in a proper house.

There was nothing to steal, and my raid on the pantry yielded an ancient can of peaches, an out-of-date box of Cocoa Puffs, and a sachet of noodles with a chicken on the front.

Mostly worthless but I could source other food.

I couldn’t find other shelter.

Not in the middle of winter.

Leaving the meagre food on the wooden countertop, I didn’t take them back to Della.

Instead, I brought Della to them.

I took the risk of claiming the unwanted house, bunkering down for the season, and doing what I needed to make her better.

I became a homeowner…however temporarily…for her.





CHAPTER THIRTEEN


DELLA



Present Day




WOULD YOU BELIEVE the boy and the baby lived three winters in that house?

No one noticed that the farm went from untended to small patches of veggies growing here and there. No one knocked when the chimney was swept and a fire roared, keeping its two illegal inhabitants warm inside. And no one cared when the empty house slowly filled with furniture, salvaged from rubbish piles and back alleys.

You see, humans are funny creatures.

The farmhouse was far enough away from society not to be an immediate concern but close enough that it was a stain on their otherwise perfect existence.

It was forgotten, ignored…just like us.

When Ren would return from scoping out tourists or seeking weaknesses on shop security, he’d smile a secret smile and feed me town rumours about the Old Polcart Farm.

You have to understand, Ren was a ghost when he wanted to be. The older he got, the more invisible he became. To a child, I found it utterly fascinating how adults just flat out ignored him.

He’d see things, hear things, steal things without ever being noticed.

And a lot of what he’d steal was information.

He’d spill unsugarcoated tales about how the son had shot the father before running off with two hundred chickens, geese, and turkeys. The father had rotted on the living room floor of Polcart Farm for weeks until the sweet smell of decay reached the town’s noses.

The local police department removed every shred of furniture, paid a professional cleaner to delete the evidence of death, then put it on the market in foreclosure.

Only problem was, no one wanted to live in a house where a corpse had lain for weeks.

But us?

Ren and me?

Well, we were funny creatures, too, and we didn’t mind the lingering smell or the dark ominous stain in the living room. We covered it with an old grain sack from the barn and placed a crate on top for our coffee table. A few bales of hay covered in blankets was our couch for that first year, while a few pallets beneath the mattress raised us from the floor, and Ren even made a lampshade for the single bulb from bent fence wire and old sheep wool.

He even found out how to turn on the electricity thanks to weathered solar panels and a broken wind turbine meant to operate water lines for stock. Thanks to his problem solving and determination, he learned how to redirect the naturally generated power to service the house.

In the summer, we never ran out of electricity. In the winter, we struggled but we didn’t need much. Ren taught me to be grateful and to enjoy each little thing no matter how awkward or fleeting.

To me, Ren was magical.

He might not have been able to read and write, but he was the smartest person I knew.

Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “Well that isn’t high praise, seeing as you were a baby whose only friend and family was a farmyard boy” but I’m here to clarify that, even now as I’m about to cross the threshold into adulthood, I still maintain Ren is the smartest person I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing.

Everything he touched became useful or full of purpose. My days were spent waddling after him (his words, not mine) watching him endlessly, soaking up everything he did, squeezing my ribbon in awe as he wielded axes, planted seedlings, fixed hinges, and constructed fences.

He never stopped working.

He scolded me, berated me, and rolled his eyes at my need to follow, watch, and mimic, but I could tell he liked having me around. He called me a chatterbox, but that was only because he didn’t say much, so I talked for both of us. But when he did speak, wow…my ears would throb for more.

His voice, even as a boy, was husky and low and almost dangerous with things he didn’t say.

He had a fury inside him that scared me sometimes.

A single-mindedness that glittered in his eyes with dark ferocity.