We’d called a temporary truce, at least while we’re living under the same roof. More for my sake than hers, because I can’t stand to hear her talk about selling this place for a second longer than I have to.
And because I worry the house might listen in, might take her words as truth. It must be different than it was when she was a kid, but the house is quick to bruise now. Quicker to show it, too. One careless thought, one offhand comment, and you can feel it in the walls for days.
She watches me watch the crack on the rosette, and something folds in her shoulders like a bird tucking its wings. I hate that I see it happen, and I hate even more that I’m the reason. Despite our sparring, I can’t seem to stop noticing all the softest edges of her.
“Do you want to grab me the small flathead?” I ask, deflecting, which is the politest form of retreat I know. “It’s in the lounge pantry. Second shelf. Tin with the green lid.”
She blinks. “I can do that.”
“Take your time. No ladders. No heroics.”
She throws the blanket aside and stands, hair sliding over one shoulder where the braid’s given up. “I can handle a drawer, Wells.”
“Good. Watch your step on the thresh—”
She disappears into the hall. Her steps are quick, and I count them without meaning to. It’s a habit from a long time ago, when counting filled the space between worry and the things you could control with your hands.
Would Elspeth catch her foot on the stairs again? Would it be the last time I heard her moving through these rooms?
Six steps. Another three. A door hinge sighs upstairs.
I lean the ladder against the bookcase and pull the old chain on the lamp to test the new bulb. It glows, and the room shifts toward warm. I straighten the framed map of the county while I wait because it’s been crooked for months.
Then a scream tears through the house.
It isn’t long or theatrical. It’s sharp and small and made from something strangely terrible. The kind of sound that puts claws under your ribs.
The new bulb swings. I’m already moving. My boots forget the floor. The ladder skin-bites my knuckles as I pass. I clip my shoulder on the doorframe and barely feel it. When I make it to the second floor, the hallway narrows. The pantry door’s half-open like an elbow, and I shove my way through.
“Elsie.” I say her name like a demand. My heart’s outrun me and is waiting here with its fists up.
I scan low, frantic. Feet. Legs. Then high. Hand. Head.
She’s on the floor against the cupboards, folded in on herself, not hurt. Laughing and crying like a person who can’t decide which makes more sense. Her book’s on the tiles. Her hand’s buried in fur.
A long, orange tabby stretches under her fingers and blinks at me with slow disdain.
“Hemingway,” I say. “Fuck.”
I haven’t said his name out loud in weeks. He’s been hiding God knows where, and I haven’t bothered to track him down. He’d rather vanish into the walls than let me think I own a piece of him.
Elsie looks up at me with wet lashes, one hand still buried in the cat’s fur. Her voice breaks on the edges as she says, “He’s not dead.”
“Not last I checked.”
“He was already old when I left,” she whispers, staring at him like he might vanish if she blinks. “How is he still here?”
I crouch down, hand braced on my good knee. Hemingway stretches and flicks his tail, unbothered as ever. “He’s a cat. He does what he wants. Curls up in the shed all winter, suns himself on the porch come spring. Far as I can tell, the years don’t stick to him.”
She shakes her head slowly, fingers combing through his coat. “I thought—” Her breath hitches. “I thought I’d never see him again.”
For a moment, the pantry feels too small for what’s pressed into it: the smell of old cedar, the weight of her disbelief, my heartbeat still refusing to calm. I realize my hands are fists. I’m still waiting, I think, for a real emergency.
She laughs once, short and shaky, and buries her face in the cat’s side. Hemingway purrs steadily. He’s been waiting for this reunion far longer than she has.
“Jesus, Wells,” she mutters into the fur. “You scared me half to death, bursting in here.”
“Me?” I lean back on my heels. “You screamed bloody fuckin’ murder.”
