“There you girls are!” Greer Burton-Bailey whipped around the corner of the building in her chair, motoring it to full speed in their direction with her pointed chin pressed hard against the Permobil joystick. She came to a stop in front of them, the bright pink topknot of her hair releasing a few more fine strands to join the others blowing around her face. “You found the flea!”
“We did,” Edie said. “Though we think it looks more like a frog.”
“That it does!” Greer readily agreed. “I came to find you because it occurred to me that if you’re interested in everything Agatha got up to, you might want access to some of the church records.”
“What church records?” Cosima asked.
“Such a good question.” Greer maneuvered closer. “After your tour, I remembered that the retired vicar, Dorna Rhodes, our first woman vicar, liked to tell stories about notable folks who’ve worshipped at the church, and that Agatha was one of them, during her stay. Even if a person’s only come around once, they still sign our register, and we try to get a donation from them. Someone who’s regular for a time might have left a bit more behind than that.”
“Agatha would have signed the register personally?”
The interested snap to Cosima’s question pulled Edie’s attention back to their search. “Who knows?” Greer laughed. “Once, an investigator from London came to have a look at the records and solved a murder, so a clue to a scavenger hunt set up by an author is more than a bit likely.”
Edie looked at Cosima for cues as to what to do next, and then followed her when Cosima told Greer to lead the way. They ended up at a cottage within the low stone wall of the church. Greer took the ramp to the curved-top wooden door, where she used her lanyard to activate a scan pad that unlocked it. “This used to be the rectory, but now we use it for archives, storage, two offices, and meetings. I’ll orient you, then leave you to it. Help yourself to the electric kettle in the kitchen to make tea if you like.”
Greer led them to a large room in the back of the cottage ringed with cabinets and showed them the filing system.
Once she had gone, Cosima sat down at the small round table in the middle of the room and pulled off her coat. Her linen top had crumpled spectacularly. “Where do you think we should start?”
Edie’s throat was tight. “Can I be honest? Standing in this room gives me hives. Greer could have explained the filing system from now until the sun consumes the earth without my understanding it. Is there a medieval trapdoor somewhere in this house that I could chuck myself into?”
Cosima nodded, her eyes big and perfectly blue-gray and sympathetic.
Ugh.“I know it’s pathetic.” Old hurt rolled up from her chest, and Edie pinched the end of her nose to stop it. A big part of her was ready to simply walk back to the inn, eat lunch, and hide in the library with a stack of vintage romances. This day—this adventure, the clues, the sense of purpose, the mystery—all of it should have been a dream come true. This was something Ediehaddreamed about, in fact. But now that it was happening to her, Edie couldn’t make herselfstayhere. It felt like she was watching herself from above, lost and uncomfortable in damp socks and too-big wellies.
She forced herself to fake it. “Maybe you can get us started and remind me how Greer explained what’s where? Or I can take notes. I don’t take great notes. They’re more like quarter notes. Get it? My junior year English teacher made that joke. God.” She was panicking. “I think I just need to eat.” She hitched out a laugh that sounded strange coming out of her throat and looked at the timber-and-plaster ceiling.
“Edie.” Cosima’s tone promised comfort, understanding, but Edie needed the snappish Cosima back.
“I’m okay.” She unbuttoned her jacket and slid it off. She caught goose bumps and shivered when the cold air of the cottage hit her arms, but that was good. It reminded her she was a clumsy Wisconsin girl who wore stretchy jeans and Old Navy tank tops, not the woman who’d felt Cosima’s fingertips against the nape of her neck, tugging the hair from her collar.
“Maybe I’ll make some tea,” Edie said. “I think tea would be good. And if you think looking for something in these archives would help, I’m down to help how I can. If you think you’d rather go back to the inn for reheated jacket potatoes, that works, too.”
Cosima didn’t respond, so Edie left the archives room and stepped into the galley kitchen, where she spotted a pour-over carafe and a canister of nice coffee. She mentally thanked whatever church worker was a coffee snob while she went through the ritual of making coffee, her hands and her body comforted while her brain spun in circles at three thousand revolutions per second, not landing on anything.
She was dysregulated. She hadn’t slept enough, and she’d had a fantastically exciting morning followed by hours of physical activity. Her tender, vulnerable heart was getting a workout. None of which would be a problem if she and Cosima’sadventure hadn’t suddenly reached a point at which there was no clear direction—the state of affairs Edie was least capable of handling. Her strong preference, always and forever, was to find a way to throw herself all-in atsomethingwhile her feelings of overwhelm ran themselves down in the background. The only shortcoming to this approach was that as soon as there was nothing to throw herself at, Edie’s overwhelm came rushing back to take over her body.
She needed this treasure hunt to keep moving. Ideally, it would move her all the way back to Green Bay before she had to think about how much she did not want to be there.
She used the time she spent making the coffee to take deep breaths, one after the next.
“Surprise.” She walked back into the room with two big mugs of coffee. “Better than tea.”
“Give that to me immediately.” Cosima reached her hands out over a small file box with pastel-colored notecards spread over the table. When Edie handed the mug over, Cosima brought it to her lips to take a long drink. Her eyes rolled back, her eyelids fluttered down, and her cheeks went rosy as she swallowed.
Edie’s heart ached. It had been a while since she fed someone something perfect.
She sat down and took a drink of her own coffee. “Why the fuck doesn’t Morag serve coffee? My entire soul is singing in harmony.”
“I’ll demand it. Tell her to charge me a premium. English people don’tonlydrink tea.”
“Maybe they do in Harlaxton,” Edie said. “Nothing has changed here in fifty years.”
“On that subject, I think I might have something.”
Edie pulled a random notecard toward her. It had been written on in sticky blue ballpoint ink, the handwriting a cramped cursive.
“Nothing changes here,” Cosima said. “When we had the tour, I noticed a bulletin board where visitors and congregants can tack up notecards. They use it to write requests for prayers, or say something they particularly enjoyed about a church event.”
