“If you’ve changed your mind about the sale, we can talk. But that comes first, and you tell me straight.”
My hands still in the soapy water. “I won’t change my mind.”
He pushes his chair in. I wipe my hands and look around for a towel. The one I used earlier has vanished. The drawer with linens slides open a few inches on its own, and I stare at it despondently.
“Stop being helpful,” I whisper to the house, then glance back to see if Wells noticed. He didn’t.
The magic has been off since Elspeth passed—I know that from the cold drafts, the dangling locks, the silences where whispers and chimes used to be. But now it seems to be showing up in these small, persistent gestures, as if it’s straining to prove it still matters.
Comforting, because her absence didn’t drain it forever. Dreadful, because every flicker and sigh feels like the house is still trying to care for me, and I don’t know what to do with that.
Wells lifts his bandaged hand, and I’m thankful for the distraction. “Rewrap?”
I guide him to the light by the window and carefully unwind the bandage. The cut looks a little less angry, the edges already pulling together. Mirabelle salve in a clay jar. The smell of dandelion stem clings to his skin, smoke and mineral and something green.
“This is working,” I say. “But that seems to be the last of it.”
He gives a small grunt of disappointment. I dab with a clean pad, wrap fresh gauze, anchor with tape I found in the blue tin. My hands remember what to do. He holds still, jaw tight, eyes on my shoulder instead of my face.
“There,” I say, smoothing the last edge.
He looks down at my fingers still on his skin. I lift them and step back. The space between us fills itself, the way it always does in this house, with the pop of a log in the parlor and the idea that we could be something like a team if we let ourselves.
It might be easy to spar with Wells, to argue until one of us gave in, but under different circumstances—without the weight of this house between us—I think we might have been friends already.
11
WELLS
The parlor ceilinglooks a bit crustier from the top of a ladder. The plaster rosette around the light fixture has a hairline crack that spiders toward the molding. I make a note to patch it, then work the old porcelain socket loose a quarter turn at a time.
Dust drifts down and freckles my reading glasses. I take them off with the back of my wrist, which is a mistake, because the gauze drags, and my hand complains. The small bit of plum salve knit the worst of it, but I’ll need one proper jar more if I want to close it clean and stop the scarring.
“Hold still,” I tell the house. “I’m trying to keep you from electrocuting us.”
From the chair beneath me, fabric creaks. Elsie’s folded herself into Elspeth’s old recliner with a book that looks too serious for a Tuesday. Her legs are tucked under a blanket, one the inn coughed up this morning that matches nothing in the room.
Robin’s-egg blue. Brighter than it has any right to be in a room full of muted florals, faded lace, and wood worn smooth.
She turns a page. “Do you always talk to the house like that?”
“Sometimes. It listens when you explain yourself.” I scratch the back of my neck. “At least, it used to.”
“Does it? Or do you just like to hear the sound of your own voice?”
“Both things can be true, sugarplum.”
“I really hate it when you call me that.”
I grin, more to myself than at her. I like that she hates it. I like that I can press her buttons without making her cry, that I can get a spark out of her in a way that doesn’t sting. It feels like give-and-take. Something real. Not polite small talk or thinly veiled land-mine conversations, but a rhythm that keeps you present. Keeps you honest.
“That’s a good piece of information to tuck into my back pocket.”
“Shh,” she grumbles.
I twist the socket again. The bulb sticks, then gives, then grits like it has an opinion. My palm flares, and I try my damnedest to ignore it. Elsie’s book makes a soft thwip when she closes it halfway.
“This is ridiculous,” she says. “Just let me help you.”
