Helena ended up making lunch after all.
More accurately, Helena did the cooking while Clara sat nearby and reminded her what to do.
The onion they had found that morning—the one that was already starting to soften—went into the pot.
There wasn’t much else to choose from.
They still had the same oats, dried beans, and whatever little food was already in the house.
Fortunately, after the chaos of the past few days, Helena could at least get the fire going properly now.
They no longer had to gather around the stove for half an hour trying to figure out what they were doing, only to discover that the pot still wasn’t even hot.
That alone counted as major progress.
Arthur was wise enough not to comment on it.
Especially after what he had said on the way back from the field about how cooking was something they could “take their time learning.”
From the moment he stepped through the door, he offered absolutely no opinions about lunch.
While Helena put ingredients into the pot, Arthur washed his hands.
While Helena stirred the pot, Arthur was still washing his hands.
By the time she put the lid on and turned around, Arthur was still standing beside the basin.
She watched him for a moment.
“Are you planning to wash off a layer of skin?”
Arthur looked down at his hands.
“They were covered in dirt.”
“You’ve been washing them for a long time.”
“I want to make sure they’re clean.”
Helena folded her arms.
“Or do you just think standing over there is safer?”
Arthur finally looked up.
The two stared at each other for two seconds.
Sitting on a low stool nearby, Clara quietly lowered her head and pretended to be deeply interested in the list in her hands.
Lucas turned his face away.
Theo was the only one who seemed completely unaware that anything was happening.
He carefully inspected Arthur’s hands.
“Dad, there’s still dirt under your fingernails.”
Arthur fell silent.
Helena burst out laughing.
Arthur lowered his head and continued washing.
“See?
I really wasn’t done.”
Theo nodded.
“Yeah.”
For a brief moment, Arthur felt as though there was still someone in this family on his side.
Even if it wasn’t for quite the reason he would have preferred.
After lunch, the three children were sent to take a nap after all.
Clara insisted at first that she wasn’t sleepy, but she became quiet not long after lying down.
Lucas had wanted to tell Arthur about some of the plants they had seen that morning, but after only a few sentences, his voice grew softer and softer.
Theo was even quicker.
He had already been yawning before lunch.
Not long after his head touched the pillow, he was fast asleep.
The room soon fell silent.
Arthur stood beside the bed and looked at them for a while.
With the three children lying side by side, their little faces looked even more alike than usual.
Clara was easier.
If he looked carefully, he could always tell which one she was.
Lucas and Theo were another matter.
Once their eyes were closed and neither of them was talking or making their usual expressions, telling the two boys apart immediately became much harder.
Arthur stared at his sons for a while.
Helena happened to walk in behind him.
Keeping her voice low, she asked,
“Which one is Lucas?”
Arthur didn’t move.
“…”
Helena asked again.
“Which one is Theo?”
Arthur turned to look at her.
The corners of Helena’s mouth were already beginning to lift.
Without changing his expression, Arthur pulled the blanket a little higher over all three children.
“They’re sleeping.”
“I know.”
“Don’t wake them.”
“I’m being quiet.”
Arthur didn’t answer.
He simply turned and walked out.
Helena followed him from the room and gently closed the door behind them.
Only then did she finally laugh.
“You still couldn’t tell.”
Arthur lowered his voice.
“I could.”
“Then why didn’t you answer?”
“There was no need.”
Helena looked at him.
“So who was the one on the left?”
Arthur fell silent for a moment.
“…Why do I have to take this test?”
Helena laughed even harder.
Arthur had no intention of continuing that conversation.
Instead, he turned around and started sorting through the things they had brought back that morning.
His hands genuinely needed a rest, so using the hoe again that afternoon was out of the question.
But that didn’t mean there was nothing else to do.
Besides, after actually trying to work the land that morning, they had discovered another very practical problem.
Not knowing how to farm was one thing.
Knowing what they actually had to farm with was another.
They had looked through the old tools while inspecting the house yesterday, but only enough to see what was there.
They hadn’t checked carefully to see what could still be used.
As for seeds, they hadn’t seriously looked for any at all.
Arthur carried the few tools leaning against the wall over to the doorway.
One hoe.
One old shovel.
And another tool with a loose wooden handle that Arthur studied for a long time without being entirely sure what it had originally been used for.
He laid them out one by one, then searched through the pile of miscellaneous things again.
He didn’t find much.
An old wooden bucket.
A short length of rope.
Two baskets of different sizes.
Several pieces of wood left over from who knew what.
And a small bundle of rusty nails.
Arthur crouched in the doorway and stared at everything in front of him.
The longer he looked, the quieter he became.
When Helena came out, she found her husband crouching there, staring at a collection of worn-out odds and ends.
“What’s wrong?”
Arthur looked up.
“What do you think we can actually do with all this?”
Helena came over and crouched beside him.
She studied the pile carefully.
“The bucket can carry water.”
“Mm.”
“The baskets can carry things.”
“Mm.”
“The rope can tie things.”
“And?”
Helena fell silent.
She picked up the rope and examined it.
At least it wasn’t broken, although it was rather short.
“Well, we can still use all of it.”
Arthur looked at her.
“You’re getting very practical when you try to comfort people.”
Helena put the rope back down.
“What else am I supposed to say?
That we’re actually rich, but our wealth just happens to look very worn out?”
Arthur couldn’t help laughing.
“No.
Probably not.”
While they were talking, a faint sound came from the bedroom.
Arthur glanced back.
“They’re awake?”
“Probably.”
Clara came out first a short while later.
She had obviously just woken up.
One side of her hair was sticking up, and her face still had that blank, half-asleep look.
She stood in the doorway for a moment.
Then she noticed everything spread across the floor outside.
Her eyes gradually became more focused.
“What are you doing?”
Arthur gestured toward the tools.
“Figuring out what we actually have that we can use.”
Clara rubbed her eyes and came over to crouch beside them.
Lucas and Theo appeared soon after, both with their hair equally messy from sleep.
Arthur glanced at them.
This time, they were easy to tell apart.
Lucas was still half asleep, standing quietly with a blank expression.
Theo came out looking for water almost immediately.
Good.
Arthur could tell again.
For some reason, he felt relieved.
Helena happened to notice his expression.
“You know which one is which now?”
Arthur looked at her.
“I always know.”
Helena smiled but kindly chose not to expose him.
Clara had already brought her list over.
“Do I write everything down?”
“Let’s check first.” Arthur picked up the old shovel.
“We need to know what we have, but we also need to know whether any of it still works.”
He gripped the wooden handle and gave it a small shake.
The shovel head moved.
Arthur stopped.
He shook it again.
The head wobbled from side to side.
Clara saw it clearly.
“It hasn’t fallen off yet.”
The moment Arthur finished speaking, Lucas pointed out,
“But it moves.”
“I know.”
Theo came closer to look.
“Can we still use it?”
Arthur examined the place where the wooden handle joined the metal head.
“I think we can fix it.”
Clara immediately lowered her head and wrote:
Old shovel — loose handle.
Needs fixing.
Arthur put the shovel aside and picked up the hoe.
They had already used it for two days, so at least they knew it wasn’t about to fall apart.
It was old, and the wooden handle was rough.
That rough handle was also the reason Arthur’s palms had become so sore.
Lucas crouched nearby and looked at it.
“This one works.”
Arthur nodded.
“It works.”
Clara wrote:
Hoe — usable.
Theo glanced at Arthur’s hands.
“But Dad can’t use it for too long.”
Arthur turned toward him.
“The tool list doesn’t need to include me.”
“Oh.”
Theo accepted that immediately.
Arthur, however, was left with a strange feeling.
Why did every conversation about the hoe somehow end up becoming a conversation about his hands?
He quickly moved on.
The wooden bucket was fine.
They had already used it to carry water, so they knew it didn’t leak.
The baskets were old and had a few loose sections in the weave, but they could still hold things for now.
The rope was too short for anything major, but it could still be used for tying smaller things.
The nails were rusty, though some were still straight enough to reuse if they picked through them carefully.
As for the pieces of wood, Arthur turned them over several times.
“Keep these.”
Clara looked up.
“What for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what am I supposed to write?”
Arthur thought for a moment.
“Old boards.
Might be useful.”
Clara wrote exactly that.
Lucas asked from beside her,
“When would they be useful?”
Arthur looked down at him.
“When we need some boards.”
Lucas fell silent.
Clara’s pencil stopped moving too.
Helena stood nearby and tried to hold back her laughter.
She failed.
Arthur looked at her helplessly.
“Was there something wrong with what I said?”
“No.”
“Then why are you laughing?”
“It just made a lot of sense.”
Arthur immediately understood her tone.
“You could just say I said something completely obvious.”
Helena’s smile widened.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You meant it.”
By the time they finished checking everything, Clara’s list had grown considerably.
Very few things were actually ready to use right away.
Arthur studied the paper for a moment before suddenly remembering the most important thing.
“What about seeds?”
Everyone went quiet.
Clara looked up.
Lucas turned toward him.
The smile on Helena’s face slowly disappeared.
Right.
They had spent all this time talking about farming.
Only now had they remembered the most basic question.
What were they supposed to plant?
Arthur looked at Helena.
“Did you see any seeds when you were sorting things out?”
Helena thought carefully.
“No.”
“In the kitchen?”
“I didn’t see any.”
Clara stood up with the list in her hands.
“Should we look again?”
Arthur nodded.
“Let’s look.”
And so, despite having already searched through the house once, the family of five began going through everything again.
This time, at least, they knew what they were looking for.
They didn’t turn the entire house upside down.
They only checked the places where food or seeds might reasonably have been stored.
The kitchen cabinet.
The cloth sacks in the corner.
Old baskets.
Several empty clay jars.
They even checked beneath the pile of miscellaneous things again.
The children’s small size actually made them rather useful for looking into low spaces.
Lucas lay down in front of an old cabinet and peered underneath.
It was dark inside.
Arthur stood behind him.
“See anything?”
Lucas narrowed his eyes.
“Dust.”
“And?”
“More dust.”
Arthur said nothing.
Lucas kept looking.
“There might be something back there.”
Arthur immediately crouched.
“What?”
Lucas reached inside.
His arm was too short.
Arthur watched his son struggle for a moment before he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Move.
I’ll get it.”
Lucas shifted aside.
Arthur reached under the cabinet.
The first thing he pulled out was a small piece of wood that looked as though it had been there for years.
The second thing he found was a handful of dust.
Then his fingers finally touched a cloth bundle.
“There’s something here.”
Clara and Theo immediately gathered around.
Helena came over from the other side of the room.
Arthur pulled the bundle out and brushed the dust from it.
It was small, and the string around the opening had loosened with age.
Clara’s eyes lit up.
“Seeds?”
“I don’t know.”
Arthur placed it on the table and carefully untied it.
All five of them leaned in.
There was indeed something inside.
A small handful of dark, dried beans.
Everyone stared at them for a few seconds.
Theo was the first to speak.
“Do those count as seeds?”
Arthur didn’t answer immediately.
Lucas picked one up and examined it.
“Beans can be planted.”
Clara immediately asked,
“Can we plant these?”
Lucas stared at the bean in his hand.
“…I don’t know.”
There it was again.
That familiar answer.
Arthur leaned against the table and almost laughed.
That morning, they had stood in the middle of the field unable to identify anything growing there.
Now, in the afternoon, they had finally found something that might be seeds.
And they still didn’t know.
Helena picked up one of the beans.
“At least don’t eat these yet.”
Arthur nodded.
“Keep them separate.”
Clara immediately wrote:
Small bag of dried beans — don’t know if they can be planted.
Keep for now.
When she finished, she looked up.
“Anything else?”
Arthur glanced around at the places they had already searched.
“Keep looking.”
They searched for quite a while after that.
They didn’t find another proper bag of seeds.
They did find two shriveled things in a corner of the kitchen, but even after staring at them for a long time, Lucas couldn’t figure out what they were.
The reason was simple.
They didn’t know what they were.
And if they didn’t know, they were keeping them.
By evening, everything on the table had finally been sorted.
Clara sat in her chair and went over everything she had written that day.
They had a few usable things.
Very few of them were proper farming tools.
As for seeds, there was almost nothing.
Other than the little bag of beans that might or might not still grow, they had nothing at all.
Clara finished reading and sighed.
“So we have land.”
Arthur nodded.
“We do.”
“And people.”
“Yes.”
“But none of us know how to farm.”
Arthur looked helpless.
“We already established that this morning.”
Clara continued.
“We don’t have enough tools either.”
“Apparently not.”
“And we don’t have seeds.”
Arthur corrected her.
“We have some beans.”
Lucas reminded him from beside the table,
“We don’t know if they can be planted.”
Arthur paused.
“All right.
We basically don’t have seeds.”
Theo had been listening quietly.
“Then how are we supposed to plant anything?”
It was a very straightforward question.
The room fell silent.
Arthur had been looking at the old shovel with the loose handle.
At Theo’s question, he stopped.
How were they supposed to plant anything?
First, they needed to know what season it was and what could actually be planted now.
They also needed to understand the condition of the land.
Only after that could they worry about where to get seeds, what tools they were missing, and whether they needed to buy anything.
One problem led directly to another.
It wasn’t something they could solve simply by picking up a hoe and digging.
Arthur set the shovel down.
“We’re not planting anything yet.”
Clara looked at him.
“What about the land?”
“We’ll keep clearing it slowly, but we’re not touching anything we’re unsure about.” Arthur thought for a moment before adding, “We don’t even know what we should be planting right now, and we don’t have seeds.
Instead of burying random things in the ground, we should figure out what we’re dealing with first.”
Lucas nodded.
“We also need to know what used to grow there.”
“Right.”
Arthur looked at his son.
“We need to figure that out too.”
Helena wound the old rope back into a neat coil.
“And if we have to buy seeds, we need to know whether they sell them in town and how much they cost.
We barely have any money.
We can’t just buy whatever we happen to see.”
Clara listened, then added several more notes to the list.
Arthur watched her pencil moving.
“Do you even have any space left on that paper?”
Clara turned it over and checked.
“Not much.”
“Then only write down the important things.”
Clara looked up.
“Everything I write is important.”
Arthur looked at the sheet of paper they had been using since yesterday, now crowded with writing on both sides.
He decided not to debate the definition of important with her.
Lucas picked up the little bag of beans and examined it again.
“We should put these somewhere safe.”
Helena nodded.
“And keep them away from the food, or someone might cook them by accident.”
Arthur looked at her.
“Would you?”
Helena looked back at him.
Arthur immediately realized that hadn’t been the best question to ask.
“I mean, any of us could grab the wrong bag.”
Clara lowered her head, hiding a smile.
Theo, meanwhile, offered a serious solution.
“We can write something on it.”
“Right.” Clara immediately took over.
“We can write Do Not Eat.”
Lucas frowned.
“It’s not that we can’t eat them.”
Clara thought about it.
“Then we’ll write Might Be for Planting.”
“That works.”
In the end, the little bag of beans was tied shut again, with a small piece of paper attached to it.
Might be for planting.
Don’t eat yet.
Arthur picked it up and looked at the words.
For some reason, they seemed to describe their family’s current situation remarkably well.
Nothing was certain.
So for now, they kept everything.
Plants they couldn’t identify—keep them.
Old boards they didn’t know how to use—keep them.
Beans they weren’t sure would grow—keep those too.
They had so little that even making mistakes had become something they needed to be careful about.
At that thought, the smile slowly faded from Arthur’s face.
He looked down at the few worn tools spread across the table, and for the first time, he felt the weight of their situation settle properly on his shoulders.
Last night, when he had said they should focus on getting this family settled first, he had known things wouldn’t be easy.
But now that they had gone through everything piece by piece, he realized they had even less than he had thought.
The house needed repairs.
The land needed work.
They didn’t have much food.
They didn’t have much money.
Now they had discovered that they barely had any seeds either.
And the three children were still so small.
Arthur instinctively looked toward them.
Clara was reorganizing the list.
Lucas was still studying one of the beans.
Theo was crouched on the floor, carefully lining up the rusty nails they had decided were still usable.
Lucas was the first to notice that his father had gone quiet.
“Dad?”
Arthur came back to himself.
“What?”
Lucas looked at him.
“What are you thinking about?”
Arthur paused.
He didn’t tell them about the worries running through his mind.
“I’m thinking I need to fix that shovel tomorrow.”
Lucas looked down at the old shovel with its loose handle.
“Do you know how?”
Arthur fell silent.
Just like that, half the heaviness that had settled over him disappeared.
He stared at his son.
“Do you have to ask that so directly?”
Lucas looked genuinely confused.
“How else am I supposed to ask?”
Clara had already looked up.
Theo stopped arranging the nails.
Even Helena turned toward them.
Arthur suddenly realized that the entire family seemed to be waiting for his answer.
He looked down at the old shovel.
Then he remembered the field that morning.
He certainly didn’t know how to farm.
And he had never really repaired an old farm tool like this either.
But if he didn’t at least try to learn, every tool that broke would simply be one less thing they had.
They couldn’t depend on someone else for everything.
Arthur picked up the shovel and examined the loose joint again.
“If I don’t know, I can learn.”
Lucas nodded.
“Oh.”
Arthur looked at him.
“That’s it?”
Lucas seemed puzzled.
“What else am I supposed to say?”
Arthur suddenly laughed.
“Nothing.”
He set the old shovel against the wall, planning to take a proper look at it tomorrow.
At least now they knew exactly what they had.
One usable hoe.
One old shovel that needed fixing.
One wooden bucket that didn’t leak.
Two baskets that still worked.
A short length of rope.
Several old boards.
A handful of rusty nails that could still be reused.
And one small bag of dried beans that might—or might not—grow if they planted them.
It wasn’t much.
In fact, it was very little.
But however little it was, it was what they had.
Arthur stood and began putting everything away.
As for what they should plant, how they should plant it, and where they were supposed to get more seeds— they would have to figure those things out slowly.
At the very least, they weren’t going to repeat yesterday’s mistake and start swinging a hoe before they even knew what was growing in the ground.