Love in a photograph

11

Winter is horrible, and for the next few months at least their family will be living off the scarce profit from the summer crops, and some of their animals will die of the cold and things will be hard but Harry's not thinking about that future; he's thinking about the one where he still gets to see Louis sometimes, when they're all grown and he and Gemma take over the farm and Louis takes over the store in Hastings. He hopes they still go every Saturday to see him, to buy sweets from him, and maybe when they get older they'll be able to stay longer and chat more. Harry can hardly wait.

The horses find their little farmhouse on the corner of North Hansen Avenue and East 94th Street with no problem, and their father rushes out the back door all bundled up to help them detach the carriage and get the horses into the stable. Ma takes the bag of sweets and puts it up high on a shelf for after supper, and then tells them to go wash up for lunch. Gemma beats him to the washroom sink, of course, because she's older and her legs are longer, but she's a good sister, the only one Harry's got, so he supposes he can let her win every now and again. After all, she's already told him they're going to be friends for the rest of their lives, and Harry trusts her.

-

Harry's life has hardly been a whirlwind, but when he looks back on it, it feels strange that so much has changed. In some ways, he still feels like the seven year old boy who used to cry about skinned knees and lived for Saturday trips into town with his sister. He's twenty now, though, and he doesn't do very much crying anymore, even when it feels like he should.

The farm work has fallen heavily on his shoulders ever since Pa's been on bedrest. It started with a simple fever, but now he coughs as long as he's awake, and he's a tough old man but he's withering away quickly. It's killing Harry to see him like this. Pa has always been a strong, brave man; he moved his wife and newborn daughter out to Nebraska from coastal Massachusetts 23 years ago to start a new life on the frontier, and now he's now reduced to a weak, wheezing shell of a man. Sometimes he gets better for a few days, and Harry gets his hopes up that he'll make a miraculous recovery, but it never lasts long. Each time he tries to drag himself out of bed and back out to the farm he gets even sicker, and it's not a pattern he can keep up terribly long.

Gemma has been in charge of the farm since their father has been ill. She's remarkably good at it, even though it's only been one growing season. She's been micromanaging since she was old enough to tell a potato from a turnip, and while their father always found it quite annoying when she was six, they're all quite thankful for it now. She rearranged just about the entire farm this spring, and the crops have done incredibly well, better than they've ever done before.

Harry would like to take some credit for it, seeing as he's the one sweating from before sunrise to long after sunset, but he knows it's all Gemma. She's absolutely brilliant, always has been, and she has clearly found her niche. It's like she knows what's going to happen before it happens, like she can speak to the crops to tell them they need to be bigger and better than ever. If Harry wasn't such a realist, he'd accuse her of being a witch, or something, but they don't live anywhere near Salem anymore and he doesn't believe in that stuff, anyway.

Magic, as he's always seen it, is for fairy tales and bedtime stories. There's no such thing as witches, as fairies, as fate. He's been going to church long enough to know that God is pretty much a sure thing, but even that seems hard to believe these days, like when his father first got sick. Harry spent weeks scowling on Sunday mornings until his mother convinced him that God has a plan, and Harry's just hoping that plan spares them all a little pain soon.

He's just finishing cutting the grass, arms sore and fingers stiff around the scythe. He hopes that the harvest is good enough this year that they'll be able to afford a plow like the family next door. Lord, would Harry love a plow.