“Kicking me out already?” Quinn’s grin is slow and mischievous; I don’t have the impression they mind being bossed around by their little sister.
But Iamsurprised Ellis is attempting it in the first place. I get the sense she’s trying to reassert some kind of dominance after Quinn called her out for the fake whiskey habit.
“Oh, we’ll see quite enough of each other over the next few days, I’m sure,” Ellis says. She stabs out the cigarette and gets to her feet, finishing off her cocktail in a few long swallows.
It means I have to gulp down the rest of my old fashioned as well, and I waver a little when I stand. I tell myself that’s fatigue; I’m not such a lightweight as to be thrown off balance by one drink. “It was nice meeting you, Quinn. I’m sure I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Bright and early,” they say, clapping Ellis on the shoulder one last time before heading for the door. “I’m staying at a hotel in town. Not far at all; feel free to call if you need anything.”
And then they’re gone, as quickly as they arrived. If I were alone, I might wonder if the whole thing had been some bizarre drunken fever dream.
Ellis stands in the hall with her arms crossed, staring at the space where Quinn had stood.
“What?” I say, a teasing edge creeping into my tone. “Sick of them already?”
Ellis shakes her head. “Of course not. Although I do wonder why they bothered to come all this way if they’re only going to make fun of me.”
A sharp sound bursts out of my chest, almost a laugh. “Ellis, they weren’t makingfunof you. They were perfectly nice.”
“Oh, yes, that’s Quinn.Perfectly nice.”
She stalks back into the common room, and I follow, sitting next to her on the sofa and—after a moment—patting her knee.
“Well they aren’t staying in Godwin, at any rate, so you’ll have plenty of breaks,” I say.
She sighs and tips her head back against the upholstery. Her cheeks are still pink. Maybe it isn’t embarrassment; maybe she doesn’t have nearly the alcohol tolerance she leads us to believe. “Yes,” she says. “Even so, perhaps we should have gone down to Savannah instead. My parents’ house is massive—you could get lost in those halls. We’d have had all the privacy we desired.”
“We could have, yes.”
I don’t ask her what we’d need privacy for. I’m afraid the answer would be something horrifically mundane.
“I used to call the house Manderley,” she says. “We weren’t near enough to the sea for the comparison to be perfect, but it was close enough.”
“IsRebeccaone of your favorites, too?”
“Of all time.” Ellis tilts her face toward me again. “Although I always related more to the eponymous mistress than our dear narrator.”
“I can believe that,” I say, and she reaches out and slips a hand into my hair, her thumb skirting the curve of my ear. I do my best not to shiver.
Maybe the privacy she wanted in Savannah wasn’t so mundane, after all.
In the firelight, Ellis’s eyes glitter like polished pewter. “I’m glad you stayed with me,” she murmurs, her voice as low and soft as the velvet sofa beneath us. “I would have been lonely if you hadn’t.”
Her words stay with me even after I’ve gone upstairs to bed, repeating in my mind as I light my candles and tuck tourmaline under my pillow.
I’m glad you stayed with me.
I’m glad you stayed.
—
The next morning, Quinn arrives early and makes breakfast, which we eat together in the dining room; the formal mahogany table is incongruous with the casual breakfast, but Ellis insists. We eat toast dipped in soft-boiled eggs and a side of bacon. “All Quinn knows how to cook,” Ellis informs me in a conspiratorial whisper, which earns a flick on the temple from her sibling.
After breakfast Quinn has to drive into the city for some poker thing, leaving Ellis and me to spend the morning reading. We splay ourselves across her bed, Ellis’s hair pooling by my elbow and my toes curled under her thigh; my horror novels aren’t so scary when we’re like this.
But after lunch Ellis makes me leave her alone to write, and I’m left to wander through Godwin’s empty halls: Past Kajal’s room, the door left open so I can see her neatly made bed, her shoes lined up along the wall beside her desk. Past MacDonald’s locked office. Through the common room, the kitchen, then upstairs again, to lie on my back in the hallway and feel gravity trying to pull me sidelong, the tilted floor daring me to roll left and press my nose to the baseboard.
I close my eyes and press my palms to the hardwood, feeling the texture of the grain against my thumbs.
