Eventually, the wood thinned and the hulking form of the house came into view, loosely tied with a silvery ribbon of fog. Tom took a deep, smoky breath. The incinerator was going again. The Pritchards, destroying the evidence?
“We’ll follow the wood around until it meets up with the moor,” he said.
“How long is the walk to the village?”
“Through the moor? A few hours.” Possibly longer, but he sensed she could use some encouragement.
She grunted.
“Hey, we have it easy. Servants used to walk the six miles along the lane all the time in days past. Peddlers and merchants, too, sometimes pulling their own carts—most couldn’t afford horses. The moor will be slower going but it’s nothing the smugglers didn’t manage, back in the?—”
“Would you stop trying to put everything into perspective?” she hissed.
“I was just trying to?—”
“Help? Make me feel better? Yes, I get that. But, you know you’re allowed to feelsomethingof your very own, right? It doesn’t have to be part of some wider picture.”
He blinked at her, feeling like a fool.
“It’s like with your dog. You’re allowed to be sad about your dog, even if he was old. And the house. You’re allowed to be sad about losing your home, even if your family shouldn’t have had it in the first place, even if it’s literally crumbling, even if you believe the changing of the guard is inevitable. You can mourn your brother’s injury even if it’s history and you can’t change it.” She fisted her hands at her sides. “You’re always trying to zoomout—‘yin and yang,’ ‘the great balance sheet.’ Not everything has to compare to something else. Statistics never helped anyone feel better. You’re allowed to have a feeling in your own right, independent of the entire path of human history. Sorry, but… Sorry.”
He stood stunned for a few seconds. “You’ve been keeping track.”
“Okay, so I might be freaking out here, but … I’m just… It’s something I’m sensitive to. It’s like when people say to me, about the robbery, ‘Well, at least you weren’t killed!’ ‘It could have been worse!’ ‘You got off lightly, really!’ Like it somehow falls short of a minimum standard at which I’m allowed to feel traumatized. They think they’re being helpful by ‘putting it into perspective.’ But it’s not helpful! I know that plenty of people—millions and millions of people—have lived through things far bigger than this. I know that my entire existence is breathtakingly insignificant compared with the lifespan of the universe. But that doesn’t change the fact that right now you and I are living through this shit, and we have to figure out what to do about it. If you put too much into perspective, you become smaller and smaller until you write yourself out of existence and you might as well just sit on the sofa and watch movies all day. We are all significant to ourselves and the people around us, and that needs to be enough. Who cares if anyone else even knows our name?” She pressed a palm to her forehead, as if taking her own temperature. That headache must still be troubling her. Hell, the air around his own head felt like an icy vice. “Okay, freak-out ended. My point is…” Her voice weakened. She seemed defeated by the energy of her outburst. “Yes, other people have had it worse, but that doesn’t make the village seem any closer. That’s all.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I suspect we’ll both feel better once we’re on the moor, away from the abbey.”
“How dangerous is the moor?”
“It’s like any exposed wilderness, especially in winter—cold, foggy, easy to lose your bearings and walk in circles. There are bogs and sinkholes. You wouldn’t want to go wandering if you weren’t familiar with it, especially at night.”
“But no quicksand? Wild animals? Haunted marshes? Bogs? Elves? Sprites?”
He was glad to see she was back to usual levels of wry humor. “You’ve read too much Brontë. All that throbbing.”
“Imps! What about imps?”
He smiled.
“Truth be told,” she continued, “it’s probably Enid Blyton who gave me an irrational fear of moors. Plus,The Secret Garden! Followed by Daphne du Maurier. Topped off with Sherlock Holmes. What is it about British writers and creepy moors?”
“This one’s definitely windswept but not very interesting. There are no wild animals you couldn’t cope with. Exposure is more of a risk than imps. Though you do have to watch out for were-sheep.”
“Were-what?”
“You know, werewolves, except … sheep.”
She rolled her eyes, the whites catching in the diffuse moonlight.
“But seriously,” he said solemnly, “even if you know it well, you have to be careful.”
She nodded. She knew what he was referring to, though his grandfather hadn’t been the first to get in trouble, or the last. Tom’s father had always hated the old earl’s habit of wandering the moor alone at night. “I know that moor better than I know my own skin,” his grandfather would snap.
Tom reached out and took Amelia’s hand. “You’re so cold.”
“Ah, but it’s nothing compared with the Arctic explorers of old!”
He laughed quietly. “Okay, I’m seeing your point, though I’m also reminded of someone I know who can’t land her plane because she’s worried about what might happen at the lights on the corner of twenty-fifth and Main, five days from now.”
