And the guilt because it still works. It still fucking works.
“No, Ma, I’m listening, it’s just a notification—”
A double screen appears on my phone. One is my mother—tearful, watchful—and the other is a laughing girl holding a lit sparkler, dark green Thornchapel trees all around her. She had me take the picture for her Instagram, and I remember being irritated at the time because it interrupted the email I was composing on the terrace while she and Poe played with the sparklers. But now whenever I see it, my heart stutters.
It’s beautiful and happy and summery and bright and a little bit sexy and a little bit silly and it’s her. It’s just her. Pretty and playful and sweet.
And she’s calling me. Right now.
“Maybe I should move up to London,” Ma says, heaving a dramatic breath. “Maybe it’s time. I’ll be alone, of course, unless I move in with my daughter.”
Static crackles in my mind as I imagine trying to live with my mother in a loft that has no walls.
I swipe away Delphine’s call only a second after it pops up, giving Ma my full attention. “You can’t live with me,” I say seriously. It’s the first direct and honest thing I’ve said to her all night. “I don’t have rooms, Ma. It’s all open. And my girlfriend is living with me.”
Ma sniffs. “It’s not as if you’re married—she can move back into her own place—unless—” Her eyes widen with meaning, and I sigh.
“We’re not getting married. But I don’t want her to move out. Especially not when I think you don’t really want to move in.”
“You don’t know what I want,” she says tightly.
“Maybe.” My headache has finally squeezed off the air supply to my self-restraint; it’s dead. RIP restraint. “But I don’t think you know what you want either.”
“Becky.”
“You haven’t known what you’ve wanted for such a long time that your first reaction to getting divorced is wondering how other people will feel about it.”
My mother purses her lips. “I don’t like being spoken to in this way.”
“And I don’t like being between you and Daddy! I don’t like feeling like I’m your only friend, when we both know that’s not true! I don’t like having to talk around whom I date to make you more comfortable!” I’m caustic, spiky. I’m a human mace swung by a knight. “You’re unhappy, and I think you hate knowing that other people are happy without you.”
“That’s not fair!” Ma says, crying harder. “And this is no way to speak to your mother! Your father has poisoned you against me, he took you away and now he’s made you hate me—”
“I don’t hate you,” I interrupt. My eyes are hot and wet with fresh tears of my own. “That’s your problem—you think all your unhappiness is because you aren’t loved well enough by everyone else. But it’s no one else’s job to make you happy, Ma, and it never has been. I’m sorry that you and Daddy couldn’t make it work. I’m sorry that we couldn’t stay in the same city and have the things we all needed. But we can’t keep using the past as an excuse for misery in the present.”
Ma doesn’t respond for a long time. She’s staring past her screen, and she’s still crying, but it’s softer now, only the tears and not the sobs.
I close my eyes. Shame has followed my outburst, but there’s relief too. I’ve wanted to say these things for so long, and now they’re said. Now they’re out there.
“Are you miserable, Rebecca?” my mother whispers. It’s my full name that has me opening my eyes. She says it like a mother should say it—like she grew me from scratch, like she labored over every bone and organ and liter of blood that went into making me.
It’s surprising how quickly the answer comes. With the headache and my terrible day and my pervading loneliness and having to fix everything and this phone call, and yet—
“I don’t . . . I don’t think I am, actually. I think I’m happy. Or something very like it.”
“Why?”
She asks it like she really wants to know. Like she’s hoping I have an answer for this, some small candle she can borrow to light her way.
I think of Delphine that evening with the sparkler, laughing with her bare feet in the soft grass. I think of her in my bed, sleepy and pliant as I curl possessively around her. I think of her kneeling in front of me, her honey eyes clear and trusting.
I think of her. Just her.
Delphine Dansey, sunshine girl and socialite.
My former enemy, my brat. My kitten.
“Because of her,” I say, and it comes out so easily that the words that follow next feel inevitable. “I love her.”
I love her.
All this time I thought she was Tea Set Barbie, staring worshipfully up at me, the Red Dress Barbie. But no, I had it all wrong, it was always the other way around.
It was me worshiping her, it was me enamored with her utter sweetness and symmetry of being, it was me besotted and beguiled and content simply to be witness to her existence.
I was Tea Set Barbie the entire time.
God, I’ve been such a fool. For so long I’ve thought of love as a lie, as a sequence of compatibility and chemicals, or I’ve thought of it like I think of kudzu—a sneaking, snaking weed, reaching and grasping and choking all the life around it. I haven’t wanted love because all I’ve known of it has been from my parents, and honestly, they’ve been very bad at it with each other. And sometimes bad at it with me. But how long am I going to use that as an excuse?
“I’m glad to hear it,” Ma says, and her voice is careful but earnest. “I can’t wait to meet her.”
“That would make me quite happy,” I say, and I mean it. “And I want you to be happy too, Ma. If you want to move up here with Ima, we’ll find a way to make it happen, and if you want to start dating again, you know I’ll support you. But it has to start with what you want. It can’t depend on anyone else.”
For the first time in a very long time, my mother gives me a genuine smile. “My daughter is very wise.”
A low battery charge notification comes up on my screen and I tap it away—and when I do, I see the time in the corner. It’s past nine now, unbearably late, and Delphine’s probably already eaten supper without me—
Oh no.
Oh fuck.
The exhibition. It was supposed to start at seven. That’s why she was texting and calling.
Oh fuck.
“Ma, I have to go,” I say, jumping to my feet and scrambling for my things. “I forgot—I’m supposed to be somewhere with Delphine. It’s important.”
“I suppose I’ve kept you long enough,” she says, but she says it lightly and not in the sighing way she might have done just an hour earlier. “Thank you for your honesty. I’m sorry for . . . a lot of things. But I want you to know I love you.”
“I love you too, Ma,” I say. It’s the truth, and I think she’s finally willing to believe it.
I do love her, even when I can’t be the only reason for her happiness.
We hang up and then I race downstairs as I call for my car.
When I get to Justine’s, Delphine isn’t there. I ask the concierge if she checked in—and she had—but he’d also seen her leaving about fifteen minutes prior. To the loft, surely, I think with some relief. I need to apologize to her—I need to grovel—and that will be much easier in private.
I try texting and calling her the whole way home from the club. It’s galling to see how many times she tried to contact me tonight. I didn’t see any of the notifications since they’d presumably come in while I had my head on the desk and wasn’t looking at the screen, but I still should have remembered our date at the exhibition. How could I have forgotten?
I’ll explain.
I’ll finally come clean about everything—how much I’ve been keeping back.
I’ll tell her I love her and she’ll be so happy, and everything will be good, so good.
I just have to get to her. That’s all.
But when I get to my lo
ft, it’s empty. There’s no Delphine. I stand in the middle of it, my hands at my sides, my heart thumping in slow, heavy beats. I feel like I’m in the middle of a bomb blast, like I am the center of an invisible crater.
Delphine is gone.
I text.
I call.
I apologize.
Jesus, how I apologize.
I don’t confess that I love her, because it feels manipulative to play that card when I’ve let her down, as if I’m using a declaration to leverage forgiveness, and I refuse to cheapen it by doing so. It’s the sort of thing that should be said in person anyway, when I can kiss her afterwards, when I can look into her eyes and hold her hand and then eventually pull her to bed.
Delph, please, I finally write in a perverse echo of what she sent me earlier. Tell me you’re okay.
I’m okay, the response comes finally. Decided to go up and stay at my parents’ for a bit while they’re gone. I missed home.
Here is your home! I desperately want to text back. But I stop myself.
Will you come back soon?
Those vexatious three dots appear, then disappear, then come back again.
I don’t know.
I’m trying not to panic. I’m trying not to read too much into her abrupt trip to her parents’ house, into the lack of kisses at the end of her texts.
How could everything have gone so wrong so quickly?
Lammas, I remember. She’ll have to be at Thornchapel for Lammas, and I can tell her then.
Auden’s birthday is next week. Will you still be there?
A pause.
Yes.
Can I see you there?
Another pause.
Yes.
It’s my turn to pause. I have to ask this next question, because I don’t think I can stand waiting the next seven days to learn the answer.
Are you still mine?
There’s no pause this time, as if she expected this question.
For as long as you want me to be.
So yes?
Yes, Rebecca.
And I suppose that will have to do. Until Lammas at least.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
St. Sebastian
“Do you suppose they’re okay?” I ask Auden, looking across the walled garden to where Poe and Becket sit close, their heads bent together. Poe looks like she’s about to cry.
Auden looks up from where he’s been resting his feet in the fountain. He’s rolled his trousers up to near his knees, exposing the strong bones of his ankles and the crisp, masculine hair covering his calves. The sun catches on his eyelashes and in his hazel eyes as he looks over to the others.
“I don’t know,” Auden finally replies. His voice is heavy. “Did she tell you about what happened up on the path?”
“Yeah.”
Auden frowns down at his feet in the water. “I worry about it.”
“Do you think the parishioner will tell someone?”
“I don’t know. They should.” Auden bends down to pluck a stray leaf from the fountain. He smooths it between his fingers as he talks. “No one should stay quiet about priestly sexual misconduct, no matter how consensual. But it’s unfortunate because Becket is a good priest—he’s a good pastor to his people. And he didn’t choose his vocation lightly. He needs to live his life close to God.”
I take the leaf from him. Not because I particularly want a small wet leaf, but because I want to touch his fingers, I want to feel his skin against mine, even if only for a second. “You think that he might not be able to after this?”
“If it gets reported? If he gets investigated? Then I don’t know. His uncle is a cardinal, and I imagine he could pull enough strings to keep Becket in the priesthood if he wants. He’d probably be asked to repent and then he’d be moved to some parish where he can’t cause any more damage. Or . . . ”
“Or?” I ask. Across the waving lavender and heady, bee-visited blossoms of the garden, I see Poe pull Becket into a hug.
“Or Becket’s uncle is a better priest than I give him credit for and will refuse to do that. Placing one’s nephew in the parish he wants is a very different kind of nepotism than covering up sex with a member of the congregation.”
I hand the leaf back to Auden. His fingertips drag over the Guest family ring circling my thumb. “Becket might not want to stay a priest either,” I point out. “If they make him move away from Devon—or even just demand his full repentance—he might decide the price is too high. He loves it here.”
Auden twirls the leaf by the stem, and his gaze is on where Becket’s head rests against Poe’s chest, where her fingers run through his golden hair. “He does.”
“And so if he’s not a priest anymore, by choice or by punishment . . . ”
“Then I don’t know,” says Auden softly. He drops the leaf back in the water. “I really don’t.”
We don’t say anything for several minutes. The garden is peaceful in the early evening—glowing with sun and redolent with life. Flowers, herbs, birds, bees, butterflies. The watery jabber of the fountain. Everything is informally jumbled and tastefully patinated—the overgrown beds and ivy-covered walls like something out of a dream.
It’s all by design, and yet it’s easy to forget that right now. It’s easy to believe that Thornchapel somehow grew itself, that it slipped into existence from elsewhere—from a book or a half-remembered movie or a dream.
“Where is Rebecca?” I ask. Digging has stalled on the final stages of maze removal until they can get bigger equipment in, but I still expected her to come stay for the week.
“She’s had a catastrophe on one of her sites. Flooding coupled with some kind of permissions conflict. She said she couldn’t get away.”
“And Delphine?”
Auden lifts his feet out of the water and props them in my lap as he leans back on his hands. Water starts soaking through my jeans and his legs are heavy enough that his heels dig into my thigh. It’s just enough discomfort to be provoking, just enough humiliation to make me breathe faster.
Auden, for his part, doesn’t seem to notice, although I know him well enough not to be fooled. He clocked the moment my pulse sped up; I’m certain he sees how hard it is for me to drag my eyes away from the sight of his bare feet in my lap.
It should be a casual touch. A fraternal liberty.
Instead, my body thuds with longing that’s anything but fraternal.
“Delphine assures me she’ll be here for Lammas tomorrow, but as I understand it, she’s spent the last week watching her parents’ dogs while they’re on holiday.”
“Without Rebecca?”
Auden presses down ever so slightly with his heels. It almost hurts, but not quite.
“Yes,” he replies.
“Do you think they’re doing okay?”
He presses down harder, and I instinctively grab at his ankles. Not to stop him, but to encourage him. To make him leave a small bruise on my thigh, one I can press on when I’m alone and remember—
No. No.
I push his feet off my lap and stand, needing away from him. Heat, sulky and lustful, flares in his face, but it’s gone just as quickly as it came. And when he speaks, it’s in his usual cool tones, as if he’s completely unmoved by what just happened. “I don’t know, actually. Delphine sounded rather anxious when I spoke to her on the phone, but she wouldn’t tell me why.”
I stretch. Poe and Becket are making for the door, Sir James at their heels, his snout bumping at Poe’s dangling hand for pets even while they walk. “I hope they’re not fighting.”
Auden finally stands too. It’s unfair that he should look so perfect when the rest of us occasionally fall victim to flushing and rumpling and dampening. Even with his hair tousled and the sun in his cheeks, he looks like a fairy-tale prince, like an archetype of polished male beauty and elegance. Like Mr. Darcy, if Mr. Darcy also had a half-brother he wanted to—
Okay, no. I have to stop thinking like this. I know it’s wrong, I know it.
<
br /> I will carve this hunger out of myself.
“I also hope they’re not fighting,” Auden responds. Unhappy thoughts knot between his brows again, and I think of how good it would feel to kiss him there. How that sun-warmed skin would feel against my lips. How he would taste if I licked him.
“They’re both strong, but they’re both also stubborn,” he continues. “They’d rather suffer alone than inconvenience someone else with the reality that they have human feelings.”
“And I suppose you’re not stubborn at all,” I say. It’s a joke, I mean it as a joke, but his eyes darken as he looks back to me.
I realize that I’m tugging on my piercing with my teeth, using it to worry rhythmically at my bottom lip.
Auden’s eyes darken even further as he watches.
“Not at all,” he finally says. “It’s only that I have no alternative but to be stubborn when my choices are so few.”
Somewhere outside the garden, Sir James barks, and then Auden sighs. “Inside, St. Sebastian. Let’s tend to our wayward priest.”
Chapter Thirty
St. Sebastian
I wake early Lammas morning.
It’s a Sunday, and normally we’d all be getting up to go to Mass, but we went yesterday evening instead, and so the house is utterly still. I don’t even hear Sir James Frazer pacing around, waiting to be let out. Poe is very asleep next to me, but it’s a restless sleep, with flickering eyelids and quick, stuttering breaths.
She’s dreaming.
I wonder if it’s about the door.
Normally I’d be tempted to wake her up. She’s naked and flushed from the simmering canicular heat that never seems to abate, even at night. We’ve all been so worked up lately, so tense and irritable and horny, and I don’t think a day’s gone by without my mouth between her legs or her plush thighs wrapped around my hips. I’ll never know why the heat makes me want to be hotter, but even now, with my skin warm and clammy, I long to press my skin against hers. To draw a nipple into my mouth and suck until she moans herself awake, to toy with her pussy until she’s wet and pushing me on my back to mount me.
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