“You know I’ve never had a romantic relationship?” Cosima drew her fork through custard and crumbs. “And you’d think, after everything we’ve just talked about, the reason would be that Phoebe didn’t want me to. But that wasn’t it. I’m not sure she noticed, actually.”
Tam laughed. “You did start this conversation talking about Edie.” He lifted his huge, bushy brows, but Cosima ignored the knowing look.
“It wasn’t about Phoebe, for a change. There was simply a moment when I realized I didn’t want to. I’ve always loved romantic movies and books and music, but there has been this empty space I didn’t understand when it came tomeand romance.Meand sex.” She glanced at Tam. He didn’t seem embarrassed by the intimacy of her confession. “There was never anything I needed or wanted from anyone I ever met.”
“Folks know more about that now. The ace spectrum, it’s called. You find it?”
Cosima made a design in the custard with the tines of her fork. “Yes. But identifying myself on that spectrum has been theonlything I’ve been able to do. There’s never been a hard click. With anything or anyone.”
“And I say again, you started us here with Edie.”
“I did.” Cosima put her hand on her stomach. It didn’t twist. It didn’t tighten.
“Any clicks?”
“Here’s my problem. If thereareclicks, what could be done? There could be a castanet band of clicking, but”—Cosima put her fingers in her ears—“la-la-la-la. I live in LA. Edie lives in Wisconsin. Our time here is limited. I don’t know how much Edie told you about what she’s been through, but she’s dealing with a lot. I am also dealing with a lot, and I’ll have more to deal with the moment I touch down at home. Years’ worth of more. And, of course, she has given me no indication whatsoever that there is even a teeny, tiny click for her. In fact, we spend a lot of our time together arguing. Bickering.” Their charming banter.
Tam folded his hands on the scarred table. “So it begins. The great Cosima Frank experiment.”
“But I don’t want to experiment with Edie. She should have something big. Something no one else would give her.”
Tam lifted the map from the table with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes. That. But the treasure is the least of what she should have—no, what she shouldexpectsomeone to give her. If a world existed where she could be mine, I’d spend the rest of my life raising her expectations.”
Tam’s face said it all, but he wisely didn’t do more than nod.
Cosima adjusted her posture to create a bit of distance between herself and that confession. “She was so excited. I saw it in her face, before she counted herself out. She wants to go where the map tells her to go and find what it asks her to find.” She pulled it back across the table toward herself and ran her finger along the soft edge of the paper. “Personally? I’m not looking for instructions from the past life of some Welsh novelist. But wherever this could take Edie, I’d like to go along.”
“Interesting that you see this”—Tam tapped the map—“assimply going along and not something that could change your own direction.”
“That’s enough therapy for tonight, Tam.” Cosima softened her stern tone with a smile. “But if I could ask you for one more thing, could you take a look at the map and tell me everything that you notice? I’m hoping a local might see a few things that we”—Cosima shot a look at Tam, whose knowing grin was entirely too self-satisfied—“might otherwise miss.”
“Will do. And, look, the rain’s let up. I’ll have a peek at this and call Killian. He’s upstairs settled in with reality TV and his chocolate, I’m certain, but I’d like to have him drive you back to Gregory Place. It will take him a bit to get shoes on and come down, so I’ll have a moment to study this while we wait.”
Cosima let herself lean back into the upholstery. Her gaze caught Edie’s jacket. She brushed her hand over the soft fabric, imagining she could smell the grass-and-lemon smell of Pears soap mixed up with the old incense and candle wax of the church, the apple blossoms that had been everywhere today, and just a little bit of sheep.
She had no doubt she could convince Edie Whitelock to find this treasure with her. The thought made it easy for Cosima to understand why, when she was on the plane over the Atlantic Ocean, she’d felt like there was absolutely nothing under her feet and she was hurtling unmoored through space.
Because she was.
Chapter Ten
Edie jumped when the kitchen door of the inn banged open.
“It’s not what it looks like!” she shouted in her panic that it would be Morag, while throwing a tea towel over a bowl of flour and the plant butter she’d just cubed.
“It looks like you’re baking.” Cosima shut the door behind her.
Edie pressed her hands against her chest. “Jesus HC in a bike basket, you don’t knock?”
“On the kitchen door? Where’s Morag?”
“She’s in Grantham picking up the linens from the laundry, but she said she’d be late because she has dinner with the East Midlands Tourist Board. If that is a real organization. But she said ‘late.’ What time is late to an eighty-six-year-old? What time is it now?” Edie pulled the tea towel off the bowl and scooped up the cubes of butter. She dumped them into the sifted flour and started cutting the butter in with her fingers double-time. “Ignore what I’m doing. You saw nothing.”
“It’s eight.” Cosima pulled off her jacket and put it on a chair by the pantry. Her linen shirt and trousers had dried into a web of wrinkles, the muddy hems of her pants were stuffed into even more muddy boots, and her hair had frizzed magnificently around her head. She looked beautiful. And disconcertingly soft-eyed.
Edie concentrated on rolling pea-sized crumbs off her fingertips. The humiliation and frustration of their argument hadn’t faded. “Eight feels late. I should’ve started earlier, but I had to nerve myself up.”
