The air in Cosima’s lungs went cold. Duncan never forgot his polite greetings.
“Duncan? What is it?”
As she listened to what he said, the cold reached every vein in her body. When he was done, she told him what she would do.
What shehadto do.
“Edie.” Cosima found her, still by the table with the tools. She’d rearranged them by size. Some of the color had started coming back into her face.
Cosima hated that she didn’t have any time. That she couldn’t be with Edie in this moment—one of the most challenging in her life, given Edie’s history. As it was, she would be pressedto get to Los Angeles by five o’clock. She reran the time-zone calculations in her head, the same ones Duncan had patiently explained to her even though it was so late in California. It was morning here. Harlaxton was eight hours ahead. Cosima would be on a plane for twelve hours if all went to plan, and she had to get to the airport, check in, go through security, board. “I need to leave. I’m so sorry. In fact, I think I have to break whatever rental agreements we signed and take the Mini.”
“You have to go back.” Edie’s voice was low. She didn’t sound like herself, which made Cosima think she must have been able to hear at least part of the phone call.
“Burbank. I have to leave right away so I can make it before the end of the day. Not the end of the day here. The end of the day there. I’ll take the bag I packed for Spain.” Cosima tried to calm her racing brain, her stomach cramping already.
She had no means and no time to wipe the confusion from Edie’s face. She had to hope that showing Edie the garden was enough. Telling her thatthiswas where she wanted to be. Showing her that she trusted her decisions, her ideas, her ambitions.
She went to Edie and put her hands around her beautiful face. “This is my garden. I won’t let anyone else have it. You have to keep it for me. Don’t go anywhere, okay? Even if you don’t hear from me. This is not good-bye.”
She kissed Edie’s forehead, hoping she could beam her feelings right into Edie’s brain so that she wouldn’t lose faith.
Maybe she could call her from the plane. Or on the drive, if she had a moment when she wasn’t focused on traffic. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could be a part of this for you.”
And then, just like before, she ran away, with no idea when she would return.
Chapter Twenty-One
Edie cut her paintbrush along the baseboard, a perfect line without painter’s tape.
She’d learned that from Mike. How to cut in with a brush. How much paint to load to avoid dripping or leaving brush marks. It was a task that, if you didn’t do it every day, required attention and not a little concentration.
That was good.
Paying attention to anything but the brush in her hand and the line of the lounge’s baseboard made Edie want to curl up inside one of the cedar hedgehog garden houses that Baroness Rachel had brought over for Cosima, who was not here, who would not be finding the perfect shady corner for a theoretical hedgehog to live in the inn’s garden, though the baroness was nice about it when Edie took the houses from her and then burst into tears.
It was exactly three days before her job at the pizza crust factory started, and twoweekssince Cosima left, and twodays since Edie was supposed to have gotten on a plane to Wisconsin.
That meant that so far she had managed two days of her theoretical new life with her imaginary inn and her girlfriend who lived in California. Two days had been enough to become exhausted and dizzy from the speed of her own spiraling thoughts.
When Morag had returned from the pub late the day Cosima left, flushed and looking so much younger that Edie accused her of having an enchanted painting in the attic, Edie had to tell her that Cosima was gone.
Instead of making her a snack and feeling sorry for her, Morag hadcalled Cosima, then sat on her rocking chair for fifteen minutes, nodding and only saying yes or no. Then she’d hung up and told Edie that it was too soon to know the scope of Cosima’s trip to Los Angeles, but that Edie should “keep herself busy.”
The next morning, Edie went into the village, to the mobile phone kiosk in the gift shop, and purchased a phone from a teenage boy with what was left of the money Morag had given her to travel for the treasure hunt. She’d charged up the phone. Then it occurred to her that she didn’t know Cosima’s phone number, so she dug through everything at the reception desk until she found it, and because she had no idea what time it was in California, she texted so she wouldn’t wake her up.
new number who this? it’s edie. Tam brought me an extra large basket of chips a little while ago so i knew i wasn’t the only one who felt sorry for me
Cosima texted back right away.
I’m so sorry. The interim CEO of the board took advantage of the depressed price of PFS stock, as well as insider knowledge from an internal report, to buy a controlling stake in the company, initiating hostile takeover. No one found out until he rejected all of the union contracts, which froze the work of about eighty-five percent of our projects, and no work means our people are preparing to strike, as they should. It’s a mess, it’s messy, and I’m largely responsible.
The blood froze in Edie’s veins.
JESUS HC Cosima!
The text bubble went up and down multiple times before Cosima told Edie she had to go. That was one week and six days ago, and since then, all of Edie’s messages had been left sitting on delivered.
Morag, who turned out to be a crack hand at googling, hadn’t been able to track down what was happening with PFS. It likely wasn’t public yet.
