Theywereproblems. They would take time. She would be surprised by low moments. She might need help. But shecouldn’t believe there was a bad time to fall in love with someone who only wanted the best for you.
“Why did loving her make things harder?” Cosima asked.
Morag grimaced. “It didn’t. It made things beautiful. It gave me ways to stand up to my parents that I hadn’t had before. I nearly had Maisie convinced we could do it, and I could keep the inn. Bronwyn gave me so much. She even reached out to her mother, did she tell you that?”
“Yes,” Edie said. “She did.”
“It was a problem we could have solved.” There was a trace of Morag’s usual edge in her tone. “I might not have been able to grow the inn as quickly. My family difficulties and Maisie’s pregnancy would only have been made worse by my openly being with Bronwyn, but I didn’t care about that. I was scared, you understand. I’d been scared my whole life.”
“Me, too,” Edie said to Morag. “But Cosima said something that made me think in the car ride here, and you know what I figured out? I could’ve saved Fauxmage. I thought that if I couldn’t do it all by myself, I couldn’t do it. I tried to take on the ocean without a crew. Exactly how long, Morag, have you been running this inn without help?”
Morag sighed and took the whistling kettle off the hob. She poured water over the tea bags into the mugs. “Always, I’d say.”
“And what happened?” Edie gestured generally toward the lounge. “I did not find this inn in the UK special edition ofCondé Nast Traveler.”
“At some point, the denial set in.”
“The pink,” Cosima said. “That happened some years after Agatha left.”
Morag smiled. “That’s because your mother happened.”
“Phoebe Frank?” Edie dumped sugar and soy creamer into her tea.
“She fell in love while she was here. Not unlike I had, years before. We got on. I told her about Bronwyn, and she said I needed to set the scene. I needed to be able to visualize exactly what I wanted and what magic I required to make it happen. She helped me paper her room while she was still here.”
“That does sound like my mother.”
“I wasn’t brave enough to get into the clues Bronwyn had left behind, but I had piles of money by then, and so I hired a designer and told her that Bronwyn’s favorite color was pink. She’d always complained about how cold the wood floors were. It was the eighties, and the designer was delighted. Bronwyn had bought those shepherdesses in town. She thought they were funny. I’d kept them in the room she used, but I brought them down here.”
“Then what happened?” Edie raised her eyebrows. “Because I am here to tell you that there is a much better-maintained twin to the former mauvetastic lounge in Tintern, Wales, right down to the shepherdesses, and you can imagine my shock.”
Cosima didn’t expect Morag to cry, and Edie obviously didn’t, either, because she looked horrified when it started. Morag waved her hand at them and blew her nose in her napkin. “Bah. I wasn’t expecting to know that, was I? After so many years, you can imagine why I would think that she never thought of me again. It’s why I chickened out after the lounge was done.”
Edie clucked her tongue, but not unkindly. “The final clue, in Barcelona, required her to write a letter to a nun every year. We met this woman. Sister Ona. She might have been a ghost. It was hard to tell. She had a desk drawer full of mash notes from your ex-girlfriend, which she wanted me to take, but I made Cosima give her two hundred euros as a donation and tocover whatever it’s going to cost to post them to you instead.” Edie handed Morag her untouched napkin. “Agatha spent three hours this morning in a very small car with the two of us and her dog, who I think needs to reevaluate his diet based on the ratio of gas to clean air, and I have heard more heartwarming stories about you than I ever would have thought possible considering that you once literally slapped my hand away when I tried to look in your recipe box.Slapped. It stung.”
“She hasn’t seen me in fifty years.” Morag reached up and touched one of her long white braids in a show of vanity that made Cosima suddenly appreciate how fond she had become of this woman. Morag had given her a place to collapse, to rebuild and recover, and then she’d sent Edie to her.
“She knows you’re not immortal,” Edie said. “I’d say you’re holding up.”
Morag rolled her eyes, but Cosima could see that she was pleased.
“Should I give Tam a call?” Cosima asked. “Invite Agatha to the inn?”
“No.” Morag untied her apron. “I’ll go down to the Arms myself. I think I’d feel better if we started on neutral ground. Also, I need to give Edie a chance to carry on without my having to bear witness to dramatics after I leave her with one last thing.”
“What’s that?” Edie said this around a bite of bourbon cream. “Are you going to give me your carrot raisin quick bread recipe and let me try it out in your Aga for the last week I’m here?”
“You can use the Aga and more,” Morag said. “I’m giving you Gregory Place.”
Cosima’s stomach dropped away, leaving behind a whirling hollow. Edie had frozen with a biscuit halfway to hermouth. The look in her eyes was how Cosima would have felt if she’d been the right person to take charge of her mother’s company.
Morag came around the table as Edie watched, her face pale. The older woman sat down on a stool and leaned toward Edie.
“I’ve known I ought to sell for a long time, but I’ve been resistant, because as much as I’ve let this place go, I can’t let itgo. My sister won’t have anything to do with it, and she’s as old as I am. My niece works in the C-suite of Tesco and shows miniature dachshunds. She doesn’t have children. When I saw Cosima’s reservation come through, well, I don’t believe in fairy tales, but it felt like a sign that something was coming. Imagine my surprise when the something was you.”
Edie shook her head. The tip of her nose had gone red, and her lips were clenched so tight that a dimple appeared on her chin.
It was the kind of moment Phoebe Frank would’ve loved. The kind she would have hired John Williams to score.
