“Before you go up.” Morag looked at Cosima, and Edie felt the tiniest shift in mood whistle through the room. “I am wondering if this is, indeed, how you want to be spending your time at this moment. Rather than applying yourself to a certain decision?”
Morag asked the question the way Edie’s mom would ask her, right before she was determined to do something unhinged, ifit “was what she really wanted to do.” What did Morag know about Cosima that Edie did not?
Cosima’s mouth firmed. “At this moment,” she said, “what I want to do is go to Hermione’s Stile.”
Morag only nodded. Cosima made her way up the stairs, and Edie followed. “I’m pretty excited about this walk,” she said to lighten the mood. “One, I’ve been in this inn too long. I’ve named the spider in the corner of my room. Two, I can wear my new jacket. Three, I can see a stile close-up and in person for the first time. And four, treasure. Should we bring a shovel?”
“What on earth would we need a shovel for?”
“For the treasure, of course!”
Cosima’s laugh was like a peal of church bells, and Edie’s heart felt as though it might burst in breathless anticipation. The light through the inn’s antique windows outlined the silhouette of Cosima’s legs through her elegant pants and lit up every color in the patterned wool carpet runner. It made Green Bay and Fauxmage feel far away and long ago, like they’d happened to someone else.
She waited for that feeling to make her sad, but it didn’t.
It was true that this was how she’d felt after she signed the lease to her store and used her brand-new bank money to go to Ace Hardware and buy paint and brushes and a broom. Probably this kind of zealous excitement was not an emotion Edie should strictly trust.
Butgoddid it feel good.
Better than anything else.
Chapter Seven
As she let Edie into her room, Cosima tried to compare the brand-new and confusing emotions detonating inside of her body to any other feelings she had ever had before.
She failed so miserably that she reverted to her adolescent self, leaning in the doorway with her phone while she pretended to be cool and unbothered.
“There’s the box,” she said. “I need to send a few texts.” She leaned in a manner she hoped seemed insouciant.
“That’s too bad, because I was going to ask you to film the unboxing for me. Oh! Too late, I’m in.” Edie dug through the tissue paper.
With a deep breath through her nose, Cosima did as Edie had suggested and sent off a quick explanation about the guest book to Duncan, with pictures of the coded page and her notebook.
He wrote back immediately, though it was ungodly early in California.
Fascinating! Your thinking of the Cistercian monks was absolutely brill. You have your mother’s luck with vacations, my love. Enjoy the magic.
Duncan’s text made her throat go tight. With love. With guilt inspired by Morag’s not-so-veiled question. Cosima was the shepherdess, smashed apart, looking for what part of her mother was inside of her to tell her what to do. She was an adventurer, trying to solve puzzles and ciphers and needing Duncan to tell her it was okay.
“Oof.”
She looked up from her phone at Edie’s muffled grunt. It took a long moment to process the sight of Edie pulling her oversized, faded sweatshirt over her head, revealing a ribbed tank that bunched up over her belly. She had a pierced navel with glittery jewelry.
“I don’t think these sleeves will fit into the jacket,” she said by way of explanation. Her long hair lifted in static in some places and poured over her now-bare shoulders and between her breasts in others.
Edie took the jacket out of its tissue paper and slid her arms into the soft, gray-green hemp tweed. Cosima would have gotten wool, but she knew Edie was vegan. It fit perfectly, darted in the right places, pockets at the hip, the collar framing her face as Cosima had imagined.
Without thinking, she crossed the room, stepped behind Edie, and swept her hand under her nape to free the long ribbons of her hair from the jacket. When she tugged them out, the sensation was silk-on-silk against her hands. She smoothed the long, dark length of indulgently soft hair down Edie’s back.
Edie shuddered. Probably anyone would at the feel of theirhair being lifted and pulled at their nape. But the small shudder shook Cosima…awake.
Edie turned around and smoothed her hands down the front of her jacket. “Well, I know I haven’t ever worn anything so pretty. I’m so glad I asked you to take a walk.”
This would be the moment to tell her that the jacket wasn’t transactional. That she’d felt a lot of pleasure shopping for it. Buying it. That she was glad Edie was here.
And so, of course, Cosima grabbed her own jacket from the end of the bed. “Are you ready?”
Edie grinned, and, for now, the too-big feelings dissipated in the excitement.
