Meria's head hurt. The thought of the empty tent to come back to made her stomach roil and her mind think back to times gone by. Times when things were simpler and her daughter wasn't dying and her husband hadn't left them for things outside Meria's control. Times when Wren was small and Maron pretended she was his and loved her even though they both knew better. 

It wasn't like it was any great secret. Wren had Michah's face. His laugh. A look in her eyes that made Meria melt at the knees and want to cry at the same time. An expression when she was frightened and bleeding and too delirious to worry she would die. The same expression he'd given Meria when they'd butchered him in the village square for something he could not control and did not ask for.

And Wren always had a smile to knock the sandals off you, but it wasn't Maron's smile. They never discussed it, and so Meria never knew if he knew...but how could he not? People gave them furtive glances when he carried her in his arms through the village, Wren's sleeping head resting on his shoulder. They followed them in voices and thoughts if not in person when he took her into their home and he treated her as if she really was his daughter.

Everyone knew, but no one talked, except for in whispered words Meria caught as she breezed past on the way to fetch water from the well or to put out the family's goats. When she walked her daughter by the hand on the way to playdates with other girls. When Meria was alone in dark alleys in the middle of the night, crying over memories years past but never tempered by time. No one said anything, because that was the way things were.

You strayed, you came back, you raised another man's child. The traditions in Terres were not bound by love or care but by duty. Duty to your family and duty to a child, even if that child was not yours. And she knew by the way he helped her cut her melon or pushed her in her wooden cart or worked long hours to keep her clothed and fed that he loved Wren regardless. It was more than Meria could ask for that he never asked, never questioned, and never treated her as anything less.

The wind picked up and whipped Meria's hair around her head. Tiny bits of sand scratched at her cheek. The world seemed less alive, like someone had brought a great paintbrush and painted the tans and yellows and bits of green over with grey. The camels made scarcely a sound as she walked past them toward the wagon she knew would be abandoned. She strode past it. The buzzing of marketplace banter around her blended into white noise as she flipped open the flap of their shuttered marketplace tent and stepped inside.

The scent of salted meat and leather overwhelmed her. Meria took a seat in the corner and ran her hand along a fine leather cowl Maron had been working on. The edges lay tattered where he had not yet sealed them, and suddenly Meria felt sad for it. It would never be finished, forever laid to bleach in the sun, wasted. 

She leaned back and ran her fingers over the bangle on her wrist. The one he'd given her just before they'd gotten married. The silver of the bracelet was dull and tarnished with time and wind and sweat. She removed it and peered at it in the light. She could barely make out the inscription any longer, the letters were so faded and smudged with dirt. She marveled at how it had only been twenty years since he'd slipped it over her wrist. Meria was only eighteen and Maron only a year older and he'd presented it like a prize, like some kind of peace offering. She'd kept it on more out of duty than anything else and she couldn't remember any other time that she'd removed it.

He'd scared her at first. He had a big, booming voice and an angry scowl that made Meria want to run for the hills. But behind that laid a soft sort of pragmatism that meant they never went hungry nor longed for heat in the night nor worried about money. And he'd never laid a hand on her or risen his voice or treated her with anything but the utmost kindness. The guilt she'd felt for not bringing herself to accept his proposal out of anything other than need nearly consumed her.

But over time they'd learned each other's ways, even though they were nearly strangers. They learned to work around when Maron stayed up all night writing sales ledgers and could barely keep his eyes open the next day and left Meria to run the shops alone. When Meria grew heavily pregnant and could scarcely get out of bed for fear they'd lose the baby. When one or another left the door open or forgot to sweep the hall or let the fire burn too long.

Even leaving the village hadn't been so hard, with Maron to lean on for support. He got them situated in the caravan, bartered for a spot in the market they couldn't really afford but managed to secure anyway. Got them a cart and a camel and supplies. Went hungry when they paid that spot back. And never once did he complain when the food ran low or the nights were cold, but there were only two blankets. 

Something rustled. Meria put the bracelet on the counter and looked away as Maron slid through the opening. Meria watched him as he moved silently around the tent, scarcely looking at her in the low light.

"How can you do this to her?" Meria asked quietly. 

Maron shook his head, then turned to look at her. Meria raised her eyes expecting to see fire, but instead all she saw was a terrible sadness. A loneliness that seemed it might crush him at any moment. She winced.

"Why didn't you tell me who?" he said, his voice cracking. 

"Would you have stayed?" Meria asked, afraid of what the answer might be.

"I knew," he said, words they both kept carefully hidden behind sealed lips, but which weren't any secret at all. "I knew she wasn't mine." He shook his head and wiped at his eyes. "I hoped one day we could forget."

Meria balled a bit of her robe into her hands and twisted it. She'd tried so many times to forget, but every time she looked at her daughter she cut the wounds open so they could never heal. She'd felt it in the village and she felt it when they left and she felt it even now, hundreds of miles away from home and years from when Micah had died, screaming, in the middle of the night while she watched.

"She's still the same," Meria said in a low voice. "She's still your daughter."

Maron dropped the sack in the corner with a thump and stuffed a few rolls of bread into it. "That thing is not my daugher."

Meria shrank into herself as if she'd been slapped. She picked up the bracelet again. She turned it in her hands. The tarnish rubbed off on her fingers and she smeared it off on her cloak. The air grew thick and cold as Maron finished packing his rucksack and walked out of the tent.

Sweet memories turned to ash in her mouth. In a certain way she'd always cared about him. Rubbed his back after a long day. Curled up next to him by the fire when the nights grew cold and long. Woke up in the mornings with the smell of musk and soap on her nose and a warm body lying next to her. He knew her like no one else ever did. 

The notebook she kept under her pillow in which she stashed drawings of her daughter and beetles and the caravan. The way she liked her coffee, dark and watered down with a skim of cinnamon and oil over the top. The spot on her foot which had started to contract, then burned as she got bigger and never quite faded even after the baby was born so she always walked with a limp on especially cold mornings.

She'd loved him, even if it was neither in the way he wanted nor the way he deserved. She'd learned to appreciate his small gestures and not to ask for any more. They grew comfortable with one another, like a favorite tunic you continued to wear even after it had gone threadbare and barely useful.

But always there had been a shadow hanging over them. A shadow of a ghost she could not rid herself of, no matter how many times she tried. A voice that whispered in her memories and visited her at night in dreams of a man she'd grown to love and then lost because she was foolish. And who could blame Maron for being angry? Who could be expected to outdo a memory?

She slid the bracelet from her fingers and placed it with a 'click' on the countertop. Slowly she stood and turned and ruffled her fingers through her hair. Rubbed at her eyes. She'd have to figure out how to run the stand alone. How to keep people from questioning when she did not have a husband. Perhaps she could say he died. That he wandered off in the night never to return. People would believe it. Perhaps they'd even feel sorry for her.

But for now she had more important things to worry about. Wren needed to get well, and then she needed to get her somewhere safe. For all the lives she had lived and all the mistakes she had made, nothing was more important than protecting that sliver of what she had left. And this time she would not lose it.   

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Meria certainly regrets her actions. Do you think how much she cares for Wren absolves her of her mistakes? Share your thoughts in the comments!