June’s fear that her father and brothers would hurt her or that her life was in danger died as soon as they dragged her through the front door of her old house and showed her the state of things.

“What have you done?” she shouted, looking around in horror.

The place was a sty. The fireplace hadn’t been cleaned in weeks, and thick, black soot and ash stretched halfway across the filthy floor. The carpet in the front room had been faded to begin with, but now it was so dirty that June couldn’t distinguish its colors. Piles of clothes were scattered randomly in the room and the hall, and the cushions had been dragged off the sofa.

The situation grew worse as she ventured deeper into the house. Broken glass littered the hall, and a few dark stains suggested someone had cut themselves on it and not bothered to clean up. A stench wafted out of the kitchen that nearly gagged her. Spoiled and burned food was strewn over the countertops and the table, which were also crawling with bugs. And if she wasn’t mistaken, a rat scrambled for a crack in the wall at the sight of her.

She didn’t want to imagine what the bedrooms looked like. In her mind’s eye, she saw more piles of clothes, filthy bed linens, and more soot-stained walls from lanterns and fireplaces.

“A fortnight,” she said, nearly shouting as she turned to face her father and brothers in the kitchen. “It’s only been a fortnight. Haven’t any of you bothered to do any cleaning at all?”

“That’s your job,” Wat grumbled, taking a threatening step toward her.

Inside, June trembled, her fear of Wat returning. But something far more powerful than that fear kept her back straight and her chin up. Perhaps it was the knowledge that Ted was only a short distance away, on the other side of town, and that the moment she called for him, he’d come get her and take her out of the horrible place that gave her courage. She wasn’t trapped in her family’s home, no matter what power her father thought he had over her. If she chose to turn around and walk out the door, they could try to stop her, but ultimately Ted would find her and stand beside her.

That knowledge gave her the courage to narrow her eyes at Wat and plant her fists on her hips. “You’re nothing but a mangy, pitiful bully.”

“Don’t you say that to me,” Wat bellowed, raising his hand. He did nothing with it, though, and when June didn’t back down, a stupid, useless look spread across Wat’s face.

“How dare the lot of you drag me away from my home before the sun has even risen?” she demanded, focusing her outrage on her father.

“That pub isn’t your home, this is,” her father insisted.

“Should we cook this pie now?” Billy interrupted before either of them could say anything more. “Only, if it’s going to win the competition, it should be cooked, and that takes a few hours, doesn’t it?”

June continued to lock eyes with her father, refusing to back down. He tried to glower and intimidate her, but the more she looked, the more she saw a pathetic, old man who couldn’t take care of himself. He’d grown gaunter in the past two weeks, and he hadn’t shaved yet that morning. The sight of him made her wonder what would happen to him, and to her brothers, if she truly did turn her back on them all.

The last, feeble shred of loyalty she had for the people she’d spent her whole life with so far caused her to huff out a breath and drop her shoulders. She turned to Billy. “Has the stove been lit? The pie won’t be ready in time if it hasn’t been.”

“I lit it when we all got up. I remembered how it takes coals hours and hours to get hot enough for baking,” Billy answered, a silly look of pride in his pitiful eyes.

“Then put the pie in the oven,” June said with a sigh, pointing to the soot-blackened stove at the far end of the room. “It’ll be done in an hour or two. In the meantime, I might as well make you all breakfast. But you will help me tidy the kitchen before I do.”

“I will not,” Wat protested, crossing his arms, looking like a stubborn toddler.

“You will if you want to eat,” June told him, moving toward the scullery at the back of the kitchen. She fetched a bucket, then returned to thrust it into Wat’s arms. “Start by collecting all the spoiled food and rubbish and tossing it out on the midden heap.”

To her surprise, after a few seconds of standing dumbly in their places—all except Billy, who rushed the pie to the oven—her father, Wat, and Chaz went to work. While they collected the rubbish and brought dirty dishes to the sink, she checked the pantry to see if they had any food at all that was edible. There wasn’t much, but at least she could cook eggs and bacon, and maybe toast, if she could cut the moldy parts off the only loaf of bread she could find. What struck her even more than how filthy her old home had become was how helpless men could be without a woman to take care of them.

“Chaz, you scrub down that table before you even think of eating at it. Wat, you can mop the floor while the rest of us work. Dad, keep washing those dishes until I tell you to stop, and Billy, stop watching the pie and dry dishes.”

It amazed her how quickly they all hopped to the tasks she set for them, and that made her wonder how they would have responded if she’d put her foot down years ago. She didn’t doubt for a moment that they were just a bunch of brutish, mean miscreants—except, perhaps, Billy, who was too young to know any better—but it was slowly dawning on her who really had the power in their house.

Not that she was even remotely interested in staying around to see how she could wield that power. She served breakfast, checked on her pie, and ignored the demands her brothers kept making for more bacon and tea, thinking of Ted. Picking up after a bunch of ungrateful brutes was a miserable way to live, but keeping house and cooking for Ted felt so much more fulfilling. And the way they’d been together the night before…. It seemed utterly wrong to think about those things in her father’s house, but the memories almost had her smiling as she scrubbed the kitchen counters between cracking eggs and putting more bacon into the pan to fry.

At one point, she caught herself glancing toward the kitchen window with the strange feeling that Ted was there with her, watching out for her. A poignant feeling stirred in her heart. She came very close to dropping everything and heading back to the pub. It was where she wanted to be, after all. She needed to go back as soon as she could so that Ted wouldn’t worry about her absence. Heaven knew what he would think when he woke up and she wasn’t there. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more restless she became.

“Are you all happy now?” she asked once all the bacon was fried, all the eggs were cooked, and all the tea drunk.

“Yes, very,” her father said leaning back in his chair.

“Good.” June nodded, wiping her hands on the only half-clean towel she’d been able to find, then tossing it on the counter. “Then I’m going home to Ted.” She turned to go.

The din of four chairs scraping across the floor as her father and brothers stood in a hurry was so loud that she jumped.

“You’re not going anywhere,” her father said. “Your place is here.”

“My place is with my husband,” she argued, picking up her pace and marching down the hall to the filthy front room.

“He’s not really your husband,” her father scoffed.

“Oh, yes he is.” She turned and gave him a pointed look as she approached the front door. “You’d better get used to it. Hire a girl to come do the cooking or cleaning for you. Better still, marry Chaz and Billy off if you want help.” She glanced past him to Wat as her brothers stumbled into the front room. “I doubt anyone would take Wat at this point.”

She resumed her march to the door, but before she could go more than a few steps, her father caught her wrist and yanked her back. She gasped as pain shot up her arm.

“Maybe we will get a girl,” her father growled. “But until we do, you’re staying here.”

“I am not,” June said, trying to yank away.

“You most certainly are.” He backed his words up by pulling her away from the door and back to the hallway.

“Let go of me, Dad,” she shouted, jerking and struggling to break free. But the more she fought, the firmer her father’s grip was.

He dragged her down the hall to her old bedroom. “Get the door,” he ordered.

Wat stepped forward to open the door, and as soon as he did, her father tossed her inside so hard that she stumbled and fell over, hitting her hip hard as she landed. It was just the sort of spill her father needed to keep her from fighting back as he slammed the door shut.

“Get that broom and a chair,” her father ordered from the other side of the door.

“Whatever you’re doing, stop,” June shouted as she stood.

She wasn’t fast enough. By the time she reached the door and attempted to open it, the scrape and thump of a chair being wedged against the door to shut it and a broom being shifted through the handle to keep the door barred told her she was trapped. All she could do was bang her fist against the door in frustration.

“You can’t keep me in here,” she hollered through the door.

“Yes we can,” Chaz called back, laughing.

“I can climb out the window,” she told them, pushing away from the door.

“Can you?” her father called back.

June frowned as she crossed the room to the one, small window. She grabbed the latch, attempting to push it open, but before she could put any effort into it, she noticed long, rusty nails poking around the edges. Someone had nailed the window shut from the outside.

“The bloody bastards,” she hissed. They’d thought things through to a surprising degree. They must have known she would try to escape at some point. Well, she wouldn’t let a little something like a nailed window stop her from getting back to Ted.

She stepped away from the window, glancing around for other ways to get out. Her window was made of small panes of glass. Breaking one of them wouldn’t help her open the window, not with the amount of nails that had been used to keep it shut. She walked back to the door and lunged against it with her full weight, but it didn’t budge. If her father had thought to nail the window shut, he’d probably done something to the door that she hadn’t noticed that would make it impossible to break down.

“Hurry, boy,” she heard her father’s gruff voice down the hall, probably in the kitchen. “Get it out of the oven and let’s go.”

“It’s hot,” Billy complained.

“I don’t care. This pie is our ticket to an easy shilling or two,” her father went on. “We’ve got to get it to the town square before they close the contests for entry.”

Some indistinct mumbling followed. June ignored it in favor of looking for other ways to break down her door. She slammed her fist against it a few more times, rattled the handle, and even kicked it, although that only served to bruise her toes. Before long, the house grew silent. Her father and brothers must have left to enter her pie in the contest.

“Ungrateful wretches,” she grumbled at the door. “You won’t get away with this.”

She pivoted to face her room once more. It was the only room in the house that wasn’t a complete mess. It was as if no one had ventured into the room since she’d left. Most of her clothes and a few of her personal items were at the pub, so the room had a vaguely empty feeling to it. It didn’t feel like hers anymore. Someone else lived there, someone pitiful and distant.

“Well,” she said, marching to the small wash table next to her old wardrobe, “I hope whoever lives here next doesn’t mind me breaking a few things.”

She moved the crockery bowl and pitcher to the floor, then picked up the table. A sudden thrill of excitement zipped through her. In all her years of feeling trapped by circumstance and family, she’d never thought to do anything like what she was planning. A deep sense of justice overcame her as she adjusted her grip on the tiny table, then took it over to the window. She held her breath, then used all her might to smash it into the window.

The glass shattered with a spectacular sound and a shower of glittering shards. Better still, the wooden bits between the panes cracked and splintered. She pulled the table back and slammed it into the window again, breaking the whole thing further.

“It serves you right,” she said, smashing the window a third time. “Serves you right for keeping me a prisoner here, for not letting me have any friends.” She grunted as she smashed at the splintered pieces that remained of the window. “I could have discovered how lovely Ted was ages ago.” She beat at the window again, though there wasn’t much left of it. One of the legs of the table came loose and stuck out at an odd angle. “I could have had a life and children of my own by now.” She smashed the window one more time, and one corner peeled away where the nails hadn’t been driven deep enough. “I could have been happy instead of miserable here, you pitiful, old goat.”

With one final blow, the last remaining bits of the window fell away, and the wash table splintered apart in her hands. She tossed it aside, not feeling a bit of remorse for the property she’d damaged, and snatched the faded, old quilt from her bed. She used it to cover the broken window frame before climbing carefully through. The drop on the other side wasn’t far, but she landed on a pile of broken glass and shattered wood. She thanked heaven that Ted had bought her a new pair of shoes with thick, sturdy soles the other day, which meant that her feet remained unscathed as she escaped.

As soon as she was free, she brushed her sleeves and skirt, then marched away from her father’s house. He would pay for what he’d done to her. That last thread of loyalty she’d felt for him had snapped the moment he’d tried to lock her away and keep her from Ted. She might have been convinced to help him and her brothers out from time to time before, but no more. This was the last straw.

The summer festival was already well underway by the time she reached the town square. Booths for each of the many contests lined the square, with people gathered around each one. Some of the judging had started already, and some of the contests were still accepting entries. Everyone was dressed festively, and even though it was still morning, people were already eating handheld pies, bits of candied fruit, and shaved ice. Laughter filled the air, and there she was, marching through the midst of it, looking like she’d climbed out of hell and brought half its fury with her.

It wasn’t until she spotted Ted near the booth collecting for the home-brewed beer competition that her anger began to abate. He was such a sight for sore eyes that she let out a strange, strangled cry of relief. Silly as it was, she wanted to run into his arms, feel his embrace, and never let go. She was a fool for not struggling harder or trying to leave her father’s house as soon as she got there to let him know what had happened.

She picked up her pace, willing to run to him if she had to, but before she took more than a few steps, her father and brother accosted Ted. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but there was no way it could be good. She was ready to defend Ted if she had to and, for a change, she was willing to defend herself. They wouldn’t get away with making her a prisoner in her own family anymore.