Even though Leaky had known right from the start that Loaf would go off with Umbo on a mad mission to save Rigg from the People’s Collection of Twits, and had even urged him to go, it still made her angry that he had done it; and she didn’t try very hard to be civil when she saw her husband and that strange time-traveling boy out the door. She threw a lettuce at them as they left, then made a point of closing the door, rather loudly, long before they were out of earshot. There’d be no backward glances to see her standing in the doorway gazing wistfully after her man.

She couldn’t help it that Loaf was a good man—that was part of why she married him and, in her weaker moments, admitted she loved him. She only wished he could be more selectively good—good for her, then good for the inn, and maybe even good for himself. After that, other people could suck on Ram’s left elbow before she thought Loaf should sacrifice anything for them.

Nice and hopelessly naive as those boys were, they were worth a bit of washing, stitching, and some food for the ­journey—and nothing more. Instead, Loaf had gone off with them to O, gotten himself arrested, and made his way home with Umbo. Well, wasn’t that enough? But no, Umbo had to go and teach himself how to do something he had only been able to do in combination with Rigg—send messages into the past. And now, armed with this dubious “weapon,” Loaf and Umbo thought they could take on the People’s Revolutionary Cushion-squatters.

So after shutting the door firmly—not slamming, since when she slammed a door it usually needed repairs—she had a bumptious half hour, deliberately doing everything with too much force, which terrified the customers eating or drinking at such an early hour. Most of them gulped down whatever they were eating or drinking, paid without arguing the price, and hightailed it through the still-functioning front door.

Once everyone was gone, Leaky realized how foolish it was to go on handling everything so roughly. For one thing, she would have to pay for anything she broke—which included two eggs, a lettuce, and a clay pot. For another thing, there was nobody there to see, not the customers and certainly not the people she was actually annoyed at—Umbo for being so sweet and needy, Rigg for getting himself arrested as a royal, and most of all Loaf for being so abominably fatherly.

If he’s going to be fatherly, then he should start by begetting a child on her so he could be father to their own.