Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel Book 3)

by Sierra Simone

  “Why doesn’t she just move, then? Move away? To London, to be near you?” Saint asks.

  “She could,” Rebecca says. Rebecca actually would, in her mother’s shoes, because nothing is worth sacrificing emotional independence for, not even family. “But she’d be leaving behind her entire family. All her friends. Her church. Everything that gives her meaning, except for me, is in Accra. And my father doesn’t just take care of her—he takes care of her mother and her mother’s sisters and one of my aunties—they all depend on him, and always will. If they got a divorce, life would look a lot harder for more people than just her.”

  Saint nods again.

  “So they’re still married. And I thought—well, my dad has never made a fool of her, you see, even when it would have been easy to, with him in London and her at home. So I thought that was the status quo. I thought the Quartey family would always look the way it did when I was growing up, with the three of us politely pretending everything was okay.”

  “And now your father isn’t pretending anymore,” Saint says.

  Her throat goes tight—a sudden, abrupt cinch that feels dangerously like she might start crying if she says something. And so she doesn’t say anything.

  “Come on,” Saint says, standing up and offering his hand. “Let’s beat the rush and go back to the Markhams’ house now. They’ve got better booze there, at least.”

  She looks up and sees Emily Genovese toying with one of Delphine’s big, blond curls. Delphine is letting her. And then her phone rings again.

  She silences it with an irate squeeze. She takes Saint’s hand. “Let’s go.”

  If Rebecca sat down and imagined a professor’s house, it would look like David Markham’s. The rooms are lined with built-in shelves, so overcrowded with books that they sag, and—with no regard for safety—even the old, green-tiled fireplace is surrounded by books. Stacks on the mantel, stacks around the hearth.

  The dusty remnants of Adelina’s life as an archaeologist are scattered at intervals throughout—pottery sherds, arrowheads, coins—the kind of stuff one can keep because it’s too unremarkable for proper study. And on the coffee table and kitchen counter and kitchen table—stacks of papers to grade, like David had taken a clump of papers to work through and then abandoned them halfway through the project.

  There’re windows edged with geometric stained glass, a set of wide, creaky stairs, and antique light fixtures that predate the world wars. And of course, there’re the dogs. Three big ones haunting the kitchen like fuzzy, overheated ghosts, sleeping on their sides and panting on the kitchen tile, even with the air conditioner roaring full blast. They follow one breathlessly for caresses and pats, they insist on sharing the sofas with humans, they shed everywhere. An automatic vacuum occasionally ventures out to suck up the fur, but there’s too much and the floors are too crowded with stacks of books and reams of photocopies for anything to be cleaned with any degree of efficiency.

  Almost nothing about the place appeals to Rebecca, except the back garden—yard, as Saint corrects her, stretching out the ARRRR like a pirate—which is filled with soft summer grass and two big oaks, old and shady and perfect for climbing. It’s the kind of outdoor space she’s seen in movies or on telly, perfect for an all-American barbecue, ready and waiting for the quintessential all-American family. It was the kind of back garden she used to dream of as a girl. Like if only they had a place like that, they would be the perfect family there. They would smile at each other and grill burgers and sleep in the same house after they ate.

  She would have traded their expensive city lofts in the U.K. and Ghana both for those two trees and that hail-battered barbecue grill.

  Since Saint and Rebecca arrived at the house, more people have followed, and now she’s sitting alone on the back deck, watching the warm wind blow through the leaves while guests talk and eat around her. The mood has eased a bit since the church—there’s more talking and drinking now, at least—but Rebecca’s mood hasn’t eased in the least. She’s very aware of her father sitting next to David, their heads bent together.

  Rebecca is also very aware of Emily Genovese flirting with Rebecca’s own submissive in front of her own eyes, fetching her drinks and hovering near her elbow while they talk to Poe and Auden and Saint. She’s not sure what to do about this, because her impulse is to haul Delphine off and do something depraved, but she feels vaguely certain it’s not good funeral etiquette to do such a thing.

  “Rebecca,” her father says. He’s come up to her without her noticing.

  Rebecca has a thousand things she’d like to say to him. She’s aware that nine hundred and ninety nine of them are unfair, and so she takes a drink instead of speaking at all.

  He sighs, sitting on the patio chair next to her, and says in Ga, “You are angry with me.”

  “I’m not. You have every right to come to your friend’s funeral.”

  “That’s right, I do,” he says, a touch coolly. “But we both know that’s not what you’re angry about.”

  She’s not going to do this. She’s not going to do this.

  “Rebecca,” Daddy says, and this time, the coolness is real. This is his you’re disappointing me voice. This is his these marks are not good enough, you’re not putting in the hours voice. And something inside of her breaks—maybe it had started breaking last night with Delphine, maybe it started when she talked on the phone with her mother. Maybe it had started two decades ago, as Tea Set Barbie worshipped Red Dress Barbie to the soundtrack of her parents yelling at each other.

  Rebecca turns to him and she doesn’t care that her eyes are wet and her voice is strange. “You’re here for him.”

  Her father doesn’t answer, which of course, is its own answer.

  She swallows the rest of her drink and stands up. If she doesn’t, she’ll scream at him. She’ll say where was this queer father when his queer daughter was alone and afraid? She’ll say how come you can be brave for yourself now, but not for me then?

  “Ma’s been calling,” is what she does say. “You should call her back. She misses you.” She starts to step away.

  “I offered your mother a divorce,” her father says.

  She stops walking. “What?”

  When he speaks now, his words are a mix of English and Ga, moving back and forth between both. “Yesterday, after I decided to be here for David. I called and told her I was going to see him again, and I offered her a divorce.”

  A divorce. All those missed calls on the phone—Rebecca knows why they’re there now. She thinks through what else he said. “Wait—see him again? She already knew about you two?”

  Her father nods, that frown still on his mouth. He’s still handsome with it, he’s the kind of handsome that looks better stern or sad. There’d never been a shortage of men or women in London pining for him—even clients at the Workshop, even employees—but he’s never indulged even one. Rebecca thought it was for her own sake, or her mother’s, but now she wonders if it was for the memory of David Markham alone.

  “That summer at Thornchapel—I took one look at him and I knew. I called your mother and told her everything, and I also offered her a divorce, just as I have now. She said no then.”

  “And now?”

  Her father sighs. “She’s thinking about it. I would give her a very healthy alimony. She could support Ima and the aunties still. She would stay comfortable.”

  Rebecca doesn’t respond.

  “It’s past time. You know it. I know it. She knows it too, even if she’s worried about other things.”

  “You’ve always been unhappy together,” Rebecca says finally. “I know that.”

  “I was her last choice. Did I ever tell you that?”

  Rebecca pauses. Shakes her head.

  There’s a relaxing to his mouth now, as if he’s thinking of the past with some hard-earned fondness, nostalgia for the silly simplicities of youth. “She had so many beaux. She was the name on everyone’s lips, the girl every mother was trying to
matchmake her son to. I was just an apprentice architect, fresh out of school and from a family that wasn’t quite good enough.”

  Rebecca has never heard this. In fact, she realizes, she knows nothing of her parents’ marriage at all, save for the misery and the strain. “So how did you end up married?”

  Her father sighs. “The boy she really loved married her best friend instead, around the same time I found a job in London. I think it was London more than me she wanted then—the escape from all the gossip and prying eyes—but I didn’t care. I’d take her any way I could get her. I did love her then, you understand, even though she never loved me.”

  “She loves you,” Rebecca murmurs. “She wouldn’t act the way she does if she didn’t. She asks after you all the time. She misses you.”

  Samson Quartey shakes his head. “She thinks she needs me. That’s different than love.”

  Rebecca’s eyes slide to Delphine, who is a living ray of sunshine on the deck, currently telling everyone a hilarious story about Auden falling in the River Cam at a party.

  Is that what’s happening with Delphine? Is Delphine her own Tea Set Barbie? She needs the feeling of worshipfulness and awe that a good Mistress can provide?

  Rebecca’s father keeps talking, drawing her attention back to him. “I know I was not the best father when you came out to me. I didn’t have . . . You have to understand, when I was your age, it was not possible for me to do what you did. I didn’t come out to my parents when I realized I liked men too; I hid it from them, and even from myself, for many years. I had no idea how to act when you told me, how to talk to you about it, because so few in my generation do. But I want you to know—if I’ve never told you, which I realize I haven’t—I’m proud of you. So, so proud.”

  Rebecca stares down at him, her blood feeling hot and cold all at once. “What?”

  He meets her gaze. Steadily. Lovingly. “I’m proud of you. You are not only brilliant, but you are brave. You chose a person to love, and you’re telling the world about her. It’s what I should have done long ago, and now instead, I’ve wasted years I didn’t have.”

  “You’re proud of me?” she whispers.

  He stands up. And for the first time in years, he folds her into his arms and holds her to his chest. Braids cover her face, her cup is crushed into his ribs, but she stays there, bewildered and tense, like a captured bird.

  “I am proud,” he tells her. “And sorry. More sorry than you’ll ever know. But I am learning from you. It’s because of you and Freddie and Daisy’s daughter that I decided to come here. That I decided to do the right thing by your mother and myself. Life’s too short not to love who we love.” He pulls away and touches her cheek, the way he used to do when she was little and he’d make her find the horizon. “You taught me that, you know. You gave that to me.”

  And with a kiss on her forehead, he leaves to go find David Markham, leaves her alone there with an empty cup and an aching chest.

  You chose a person to love.

  He’s wrong about that part. Delphine doesn’t love her, she loves the kink, and Rebecca is wise enough not to conflate the two.

  And anyway, Rebecca would know if she loved Delphine, right? She would feel it, it would be apparent to her. She sees how Becket looks at Poe—like Poe is running around with half his internal organs and only just now told him—and she knows she doesn’t look at Delphine like that. She knows that even though she wants to drag Delphine away from Emily Genovese and make love to her in a dark corner until she’s limp and purring—she knows that even though she can barely breathe when Delphine isn’t near her—she knows that even though Delphine makes her frantic, feral, vulnerable, unspooled—that’s not love. It’s nothing like love.

  It can’t be love, because she doesn’t do that.

  It’s lust, is all. Possession. Good kink.

  But, Rebecca thinks, straightening her shoulders and heading for the other side of the deck, Delphine belongs to her. And she’s not a novelty, she’s not something that Rebecca will ever, ever get sick of, and the sooner she understands that, the better off that pretty, easily welted bottom will be.

  “Excuse me,” Rebecca cuts in smoothly to the group, smiling at Emily Genovese as she puts a hand on the back of her submissive’s neck. And without another word, she guides Delphine away from the post-funeral chatter and to the upstairs guest room, where she fucks Delphine in her cute plum funeral dress until Delphine’s cries are hoarse and Rebecca feels in control again.

  She collapses onto the bed next to Delphine and gathers her happy, loose-limbed slut close, petting her and kissing her.

  She’ll have to go back down soon. She’ll have to face her father and David Markham again, and she’ll have to call her mother back, finally. But she has her Delphine, and her father said he was proud of her, and for the first time in a very long time, her mouth stays curved in a smile after the sex is over.

  And she can honestly tell Ma she went to church today.

  In the words of her mother, praise the Lord.

  Midsummer

  Auden

  “Is it strange that we’re both sitting here with you, when it was our father who very probably killed your mother?” Auden’s voice breaks into the hot summer air, joining the lapping of the lake and the unending whirr of the cicadas.

  In front of them, Becket and Rebecca are arguing about the best way to start a fire with the limited resources they have. Delphine is standing over them, interjecting with things she’s finding on Google with her phone. On the lake, the sinking sun has painted a path of orangey-pink arrowing east to the hills.

  He turns to look at Poe, who’s staring at him with some surprise. Her mouth is parted, showing off the tempting crease in her full lower lip, and without thinking, Auden reaches up to press against it with his thumb. His crease. His lip. His Poe.

  “I’m sorry if that’s a cruel thing to ask,” he says. “But I can’t stop thinking about it. If our father had never met your mother, you wouldn’t have gone to her funeral today. And now here you are with not just one but two of his sons. In your place, I don’t think I could endure it. I don’t think I could forgive me or St. Sebastian for bearing the blood of Ralph Guest.”

  Poe looks down, long lashes sweeping over her heat-flushed cheeks. “I’ve been thinking about it too.”

  St. Sebastian shifts on the other side of her. They’re all sitting on a blanket spread over the ground, coolbox packed full of drinks and food nearby, their shoes kicked off and their naked feet in the grass. They’re here because, as the evening wore on and the Markhams’ funeral guests trickled away, it became increasingly apparent that Samson and David needed to talk privately. Proserpina suggested they go to a spot she knew on the nearby lake and watch the midsummer sun set, and Rebecca quickly seconded with palpable relief.

  “For what it’s worth—” Auden starts, but Proserpina holds up her hand.

  “Don’t say you’re sorry.”

  “But I am, Proserpina. So fucking sorry.”

  A breeze kicks up and sends the hair not tucked into the knot at her neck flying around her face.

  “Me too,” St. Sebastian adds softly, and she sighs.

  “It’s not your fault. And no—stop. I’m not just saying that. It’s actually not your fault. Any more than it was Becket’s for having been there for part of it. I don’t blame any of you.”

  She looks out over the lake. Nearby, Becket finally gets the fire going, and Delphine whoops.

  “If my mother and your father hadn’t met, then we wouldn’t have met. And I keep thinking—how could her tragedy have been my happiness? Her end, my beginning?”

  No one has a response to that, save for the cicadas, who seem to have a response to everything.

  “It’s a question for Becket,” Auden says.

  “Or it’s a question without an answer,” she says.

  “Or that.”

  Becket calls out that he’s going to follow the overgrown trail to see where it will le
ad, and Delphine and Rebecca spread out their blanket on the other side of the fire. Trees, thrumming with the cicadas’ chirr, surround them on all sides except for the east, where the lake ruffles under the last of the sun.

  They’re in a spot Poe says almost no one uses, and they’re utterly alone—no people, or cars, or boats anywhere. It’s almost like Thornchapel in a way, and Auden finds himself grateful for tonight. Just to be alone with his friends. With his little bride and his St. Sebastian.

  Proserpina takes in a deep breath, and Auden can almost imagine the trees and lake breathing with her, inhaling and expanding and reaching, and then she lets the breath go, and the world sighs with her.

  Auden knows that breath, because he’s breathed it himself both at Thornchapel and in the graveyard of St. Brigid’s.

  It’s a breath of resignation. It’s a breath for all the breaths her mother can no longer take. It’s a breath at the beginning of a new life she’ll have to start again and again, each time she remembers, each time she forgets. She’s been practicing it for twelve years, and that’s why Auden trusts the look in her eyes when she puts her hand over his and tilts her head at Saint.

  “Are you sure?” he murmurs. They talked about what they would do tonight—they talked about it before they left England, actually—but Auden knows how depleting a funeral can be, and anyway, the plan had been to be in her room, with walls and a door. Not in the warm open air.

  But he can also read the restlessness building in her, he can see her need for something distracting and Saturnalian and vital. She’s itching for something he can give, and he was born to give her everything.

  “I’m sure,” she says firmly, and that’s that.

  “St. Sebastian, we have something for you,” Auden says, leaning forward to look at his half-brother.

  St. Sebastian looks confused. “Something for me?”

  “It’s your birthday today,” Poe reminds him softly. “We didn’t forget, you know.”

  St. Sebastian looks like he’s not sure what to say or do—which is fine, because Auden is sure enough for all of them. Auden gets up from where he’s seated and takes the few steps over to St. Sebastian, so that he’s standing right behind where he sits. On the other side of the fire, Delphine and Rebecca are already amorously occupied, and so Auden feels no compunctions about what comes next.