After dinner, Helena gathered the bowls together, but Arthur remained seated at the table.
He had spent too long gripping the hoe that afternoon, and his palms were red and sore.
Even holding a spoon had felt uncomfortable.
Clara glanced at him.
“Dad, do your hands hurt so much that you don’t want to wash the dishes?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Yes.”
Arthur looked down at his hands and smiled.
“I’ll still wash them.
But before that, I think we should talk about a few things.”
Helena set the bowls back on the table.
“About tomorrow?”
“About what comes after tomorrow,” Arthur said.
“Today, we just did whatever needed doing as we noticed it.
We were busy all day, and I still only cleared a small part of the plot behind the house.
I think we need to figure out what matters most first.”
The moment Clara heard that, she pulled out their list.
She leaned over the table, turned the page to the back, found an empty space, and picked up her pencil.
Lucas and Theo stayed where they were as well.
The three children sat on their chairs with their feet dangling above the floor, their legs swinging lightly beneath them.
Arthur looked at them, then waited until Helena had taken a seat before speaking.
“Let’s start with what we know.”
“We were transported here,” Theo said.
“You don’t need to write that one down.” Clara looked at her small hands.
“We can see that every day.”
Lucas continued, “All five of us are here.
Our first names are still the same, but now we’re the Bennetts.
And we moved here from the old house a few days ago.”
“But we still don’t remember why the family split up,” Helena said.
“The dream last night only showed us a few pieces of the past.
We don’t know if we’ll remember anything else.”
Arthur nodded.
“So for now, we shouldn’t rely on guesses.
If we meet anyone we don’t know, be careful what you say.”
Clara wrote down:
Still don’t know what happened at the old house.
After thinking for a moment, she added:
Don’t know the area either.
“We don’t even know where the town is,” she said.
“And we don’t have enough money to wander around looking for it,” Helena added.
“We need to make the food last, and we should keep track of how much firewood we have too.”
At the mention of food, Clara immediately remembered the portion of oats they had used that afternoon.
She looked through the list again.
Flour, oats, dried beans, onions.
There wasn’t much of anything.
She tried to work out how many days their supplies might last, but without knowing how much they would use each day, she gave up halfway through.
“Anyway, it’s not much,” she concluded.
“The house needs fixing too.” Theo looked toward the cabinet door that refused to close properly.
“The cabinet can wait,” Arthur said.
“The roof matters more.
While the weather’s clear, we should check whether there are any leaks.”
Lucas looked toward the window.
“And leave those narrow-leaved plants alone until we know what they are.
We still don’t know if they’re wheat.”
Arthur cleared his throat.
“I won’t pull them out again tomorrow.”
“You weren’t planning to pull them out today either,” Clara said.
Helena pressed her lips together, hiding a smile, and reached over to straighten the paper in front of Clara.
“Let your father finish.”
Arthur looked around the table.
He had been thinking about what he wanted to say, but now that everyone was sitting here, he realized there was no need to make it complicated.
The children already knew what the family was short of.
Helena had already sorted through most of what they could use.
All they really needed was to decide what came first.
“We take care of food and shelter first,” he said.
“Tomorrow, we’ll count the food properly.
Then we’ll check the house, inside and out, and fix whatever we can.
We’ll clear the land slowly, but first we need to figure out what was planted there before.
Once all that is under control, we can find out what kind of work there is in town and start thinking about earning money.”
Clara looked up.
“We’re not going to town right away?”
“We will, but first we need to know how to get there and what the money we have can actually buy,” Arthur said.
“And the three of you can’t walk very far right now.
We can’t just decide to go somewhere and head out.”
Lucas looked down at his short legs and didn’t argue.
He had already made two trips to the stream that day, then spent most of the afternoon standing beside the plot and telling Arthur which plants he could and couldn’t pull.
By the time dinner came around, he had barely wanted to move.
This three-year-old body simply couldn’t keep up with the way he used to do things.
Theo looked down at his own hands.
“So I still can’t help carry water tomorrow.”
“You can help me check whether the bucket leaks,” Arthur said.
“We already checked that today.”
“Then remind me to wash my hands.”
“You don’t need to assign me that job,” Theo said.
“I was going to remind you anyway.”
Clara burst out laughing.
She picked up her pencil again and wrote down the order Arthur had just given them.
When she reached repair the house, she remembered the loose cabinet door and the fence behind the house.
She paused.
In the end, she kept it to four simple lines.
Make sure we have food and shelter.
Repair the house.
Figure out the land.
Then think about earning money. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
She turned the paper around so everyone could see it.
“Did I miss anything?”
“We still need to figure out what happened at the old house,” Lucas said.
“There’s no point rushing that,” Helena replied.
“We can ask around when we get the chance.”
Arthur looked over the four lines.
“Then that’s the plan.
Tomorrow morning, we start with the house and the food.”
Clara folded the paper and prepared to climb down from her chair.
She stretched her feet toward the floor.
They still didn’t reach.
So she held on to the edge of the table and slowly slid herself down.
Once her feet finally touched the floor, she looked over and realized Lucas and Theo were doing exactly the same thing.
Arthur watched the three of them.
“You all sounded very serious during the meeting, but when it’s over, you still have to climb down from your chairs.”
“The chairs are too high,” Lucas said.
“We need shorter stools,” Theo said.
Clara smoothed down her skirt.
“We’ll change them before the next meeting.”
“We might not have another meeting tomorrow,” Arthur said.
“Then next time.”
She handed the paper to Helena.
“This list isn’t full yet anyway.”
Helena put it into the wooden box.
The three children headed toward the bedroom together.
When Clara reached the doorway, she glanced back at the hoe leaning against the wall.
“Dad, after you check the house tomorrow, are you going to pull weeds again?”
“Yes.
But I’ll let Lucas tell me which ones I’m allowed to pull first.”
“Good.”
Arthur listened as the three children disappeared into the bedroom, already discussing who would sleep in the middle that night.
Then he stood and carried the bowls over to the water bucket.
Helena followed him, took one from his hands, and glanced at his palms.
“Don’t spend the whole day holding that hoe tomorrow.”
“I know,” Arthur said.
“I still have the house and the food to check.”
Helena smiled and lowered her head to wash the dishes.
Arthur dried each bowl as she finished and placed them back in the cabinet one by one.
The cabinet door still wouldn’t close properly.
He pushed it twice.
It swung back both times.
In the end, he gave up and simply rested it against the frame.
“We need to put this door on the list too.”
“Clara already did,” Helena said.
Arthur thought of his daughter’s increasingly crowded list and couldn’t help smiling.
There was certainly no shortage of things that needed doing.
And there was no way they could finish all of them tomorrow.
But at least, for the first time since they had arrived here, they knew where to begin.