At the table, her shoulders drop a little. I plate the food. She eats.
We talk around the sharp edges. The county’s letter. How Alma cried in her car after pretending not to. How Bobby told three people at the Harbor Light he was going to carve our initials into the sign with a nail.
She rolls her eyes. “Honestly, let him have it.”
“He will,” I say, and we almost laugh.
Afterward, I pour plum wine for both of us.
“You asked me once why I stayed here in Blue Willow for so long.”
She gives a sad smile. “Is it because of the magic?”
“It’s because this house was the first place that wanted me without proof. I told you my family didn’t have any room for the messy version of me. Elspeth gave me work and a room and a reason. A home, a place where I belong. The idea of losing that terrifies me.”
She blinks hard. “I know that feeling well. Loss is slippery like that. It doesn’t always wait for the letting go. Sometimes it starts the moment something matters to you.’
“You know it better than me.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
We clean up quietly. The normalcy of it is its own sort of benediction: plates under hot water, the scrape of forks, the soft thud of the oven door. She dries; I wash. We move around each other in the small kitchen like we’ve done this a million times.
In the parlor, the record turns and turns. We step through the doorway, and the song changes without me touching the needle. “Silver Springs.”
You can call it a coincidence if you want. The house wouldn’t, and neither would I.
Elsie freezes in the archway. “Wells.”
“I know,” I say. “Tell me to skip it, and I will.”
She stands very still, breathing through her nose, and then—because she’s braver than she knows—she shakes her head. “Let it play.”
I hold out my hand. “Dance with me.”
She crosses the rug and lays her hand in mine. It fits the way it did in the snow, the way it did in the alcove, the way I pray it will when we’re old and foolish and the house has to shout at us to stop bickering about a hinge.
I put my other hand at her waist, careful. She sets her palm against my chest, right where it hurts. We sway, barely moving. Hemingway threads through our ankles, daring me to step on his tail.
Elsie rests her forehead against my jaw.
“Fuck you, in particular,” she whispers, “for ruining my favorite song.”
“I know,” I murmur into her hair. “I’m sorry. Do you think we can fix it?”
Her fingers curl in my shirt. We move slowly enough to hear the click of the needle at the groove, the breath she takes when the harmony climbs, the faint, contented creak of the house. When the chorus fades, the record hisses softly and then turns again, and neither of us lets go.
“You still want me?” I whisper.
“Yeah, I still want you.”
I swallow hard. “I’m learning to ask for what I need. I have a hard time doing it properly.”
“Only sometimes,” she says dryly.
“I’m going to try now.” My hands are shaking. “I need you, and I want you, Elsie. In the quiet way, where wanting you means wanting to be the person you can lay your head on without thinking through the angles. Where wanting means staying when you’re unlovely, and I’m infuriating, and the house is angry with both of us.
“I want your lists and your late-night second-guesses and the way you stare too long at the molding when you’re trying not to cry. I want your laughter in our kitchen and your scowls at my bad jokes. I want your contrarian arguments because they make me sharper. I want the mornings you don’t talk until coffee and the afternoons you don’t stop. I want the whole of you, stubborn and sweet and scared.”
