After finishing the letters, Clara let out a cold laugh, tossed them onto the table, blew out the lamp, and went to sleep.
So Lester had actually seen her in the county town?
The tone of the letters was full of probing, clearly trying to confirm whether she had discovered him living a life of leisure and vice in town.
But Clara felt nothing. Probing or not, it was meaningless now. To her, Lester was just a scrapped account.
She had four alternate accounts at home—recharging any one of them would yield better returns than keeping this waste.
It was just a matter of time. Life was already improving steadily. She wasn't in a rush.
As for the money Lester owed? If he couldn't pay it back—he could repay it with his life.
Clara didn't want thoughts of him tainting her mood. She shut her eyes, emptied her mind, and sank into a deep, peaceful sleep.
Having been out in the mountains for days without rest, she made up for it all in one go—sleeping straight until noon.
The children, well aware of her habits, didn't disturb her.
They made their own breakfast, saved a portion for her and left it warm on the stove. Then, whoever was on duty that day cleaned the dishes.
Adam and Ben did the laundry; the twins weren't quite there yet.
They wanted to help, but Ben quickly drove them off to feed the chickens and horse instead.
Even the clothes Clara had changed out of were washed by Adam and Ben—scrubbed clean and hung neatly across the bamboo pole in the courtyard.
Once all the chores were done, the children got on with their training or studies. Knowing such peaceful opportunities were rare, they disciplined themselves without needing reminders.
Especially after Adam told them that Clara had chosen personal names for each of them—Ben nearly started devouring his books out of excitement.
Deb dipped her brush in clean water, practicing her name on the wooden table: Lillian. Ben had found them in a book. The strokes weren't too hard, but for Deb, they already felt intricate.
She traced the characters again and again, her messy strokes slowly growing steadier—grinning as she wrote.
Chad wanted to write too, but since Ben couldn't find it in his books, Chad just practiced "Lysander" with his second brother instead.
When Clara finally woke up, the only sound in the courtyard was the scratch of brush on wood—a peaceful kind of quiet.
Stretching, she passed by their window. Four pairs of eyes shot toward her at once. Deb immediately dropped her brush, slid off her chair, and ran into Clara's arms.
"Mom, how do you write Big Brother and Little Brother's names?" she asked.
Clara glanced into the room, surprised. She'd assumed they were practicing calligraphy—not writing their names.
Adam looked a little embarrassed. "I told them the names you picked," he admitted.
Clara smiled softly, carried Deb back to her seat, and picked up a brush. She wrote down all four of their names clearly.
Her handwriting wasn't beautiful, but it was neat.
"There. Practice with these—you'll need to know them when school starts." She set the brush down, ruffled each of their heads, then clapped her hands and headed to the kitchen.
The children exchanged gleeful glances, gathering around to admire each other's names. Each time Ben read one aloud, its owner would shout back in proud response.
These weren't just placeholders anymore—they were real names, theirs alone. Not just some "ABCD" but names like Rosie and Ryder—names that truly belonged to them.
For breakfast, Adam had made white rice porridge. He chopped half a pound of meat into mince and stir-fried it with a heaping bowl of pickled greens—flavorful and perfect to eat with rice.
Clara dumped the entire meat-and-greens mixture into the porridge pot. It came out refreshingly appetizing and went down smooth.
She devoured the whole potful, washed up, and lit the stove again—this time to render lard.
She chopped the fat into small cubes, brushed the iron pot with a thin layer of oil, and then tossed them in. The pot sizzled immediately, releasing an aroma so rich that all four children came running to the kitchen door to watch.
"Ma, why are you scooping out ash?" Chad asked.
Deb tilted her head, guessing, "Is it for Old Yeller again?"
She had seen Clara use ash to treat straw before, so she assumed it was the same this time.
Clara shook her head. "I'm making soap today."
"What's soap?" Ben asked, deeply inhaling the delicious scent.
It was around lunchtime—though they had eaten late, the smell alone made him hungry again.
"Soap is for washing clothes and bathing. You'll see when it's done," Clara said.
Adam suddenly remembered the soap powder they'd seen in the general store yesterday. "Auntie, are you making that soap powder? The one that costs twenty coins per 50g?"
"More or less." Clara nodded. She asked Adam to fetch her two basins and some muslin cloth.
Then she instructed Ben to bring the river clam shells they'd collected in summer.
"Oh, right—Chad and Deb, you two run over to Peddler Liew's and buy 200g of coarse salt," she said, placing a half-bucket of plant ash by the kitchen door and heading inside to grab six coins for the twins.
They took the money and happily dashed off, excited to be involved.
Ben soon returned with half a sack of clam shells. Clara burned the rest of last winter's charcoal in the stove and placed the shells inside to calcine them.
By the time the lard was fully rendered, the shells were nearly done.
She scooped out half a jar of lard to cool and saved the crispy lard bits in a bowl—perfect snack for their working session.
They crunched into the crisped bits with a loud "crack"—the kind that left a mouthful of savory flavor behind.
Clara pulled out her sesame-grinding mortar and crushed the burned shells into a fine powder.
Then, she poured the plant ash into a clay pot, added water, and boiled it. Layer after layer of filtering through muslin yielded a pot of alkaline water.
She stirred the clam powder into the alkaline solution, filtered it again, and let it sit overnight to settle.
When the twins returned with the coarse salt, Clara ground it into fine powder for later.
The next day, she mixed the cooled lard with the settled alkaline water and coarse salt powder. Using a wooden spatula, she stirred the mixture until it began to saponify.
The children watched the liquid slowly transform into a soft paste and gasped—convinced Clara was casting some sort of spell.
Clara took the opportunity to explain what saponification was—but none of them bought it.
To them, this was magic—not chemistry.
The resulting white soap paste was still soft, so Clara packed it into bamboo tubes. Three days later, she opened them—two perfect white cylinders.
She used cotton string to cut the bars into twelve smaller pieces, placing them in a bamboo tray and hanging them up in the storage room to air-dry for a month.
"A whole month?" Deb pouted. "Ma, can't we use it now?"
"You can," Clara said, hanging the tray from the beam. "But it'll be mush—like cow dung."
She jumped off the stool and waved the kids out.
"You're not to touch it. After a month, then we'll see. No sneaking!" she warned sternly.
Deb sighed dramatically. "Alright…"
(End of Chapter)
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