Where there had been Cosima, there was now a black hole. The inn seemed huge without her. Edie’s heart was literally plinking and plonking as it drifted around her rib cage.
She couldn’t think up anything soothing and reasonable totell herself. She could only think about how Cosima’s skin felt against hers, and how her voice sounded when she was half-asleep—a yearning that came from the center of her body and gathered all of her nerves to pull on them at once.
Without thoughts she could trust, Edie didn’t have actions, and without actions, it turned out that she was one of the garden’s quivering slugs creeping around the inn, sliming sadly and hiding from Morag.
“Edie!”
She jumped, swiping paint onto the dark wood of the baseboard. She pulled out her rag to scrub it off. “What the hell, woman!” She spun around on her butt.
Morag stood in reception, clasping hands with Agatha, who wore an honest-to-god driving cap and was looking at Morag like she’d invented oxygen. “I’d already said your name twice.”
“When you yell, you call down the spirit world. My soul is in tatters.” Edie stood up. “Agatha.”
“Good morning, Edie.” Agatha took off her hat and kissed Morag’s cheek. “I’ll take myself to the kitchen and make us tea.”
“Oh, soAgathacan use your kitchen.” Edie wrinkled her nose at Morag. “But I’m back behind the velvet ropes.”
“You created the menu. You haven’t accepted my offer. No kitchen for you.” Morag looked around at the lounge. “The paint looks good. You’ll need a second coat.”
“I amaware.”
Morag gave her a long look, and Edie did her best to vibe her into walking away. It didn’t work. She came closer. She didn’t have her apron on, which made Edie uncomfortable.
“You have canceled three meetings with my solicitor to discuss the terms of my offer. You do nothing around here but invent a new mess to make every day. You didn’t go home, norhave you paid me to extend your stay, and you haven’t tried to talk to Cosima.”
“I have tried!”
“What? You’vetextedher? I text the greengrocer to cancel cress for the week. I text my sister to ask her if she wants mince or beans in the burritos I’m ordering for our movie night. I don’t text women I’ve changed my entire life for, and who are likely dealing with the biggest catastrophe I can imagine!” Morag’s hands were on her hips.
Edie thought of half a dozen insulting ways to point out that Morag had not texted, called, written to, or driven to Wales to find her lost love, but she kept them in her mouth, where they belonged. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. Whispered, actually.
“Well, then! Someone needs to alert the press! When is the neon sign in Times Square going up,Edie Whitelock Doesn’t Know What to Do?” Morag used air quotes. Unhelpful. “You’re not the first person in this situation. This isn’t even the first time you haven’t known what to do.”
“But I think itis!” Now Edie’s hands were on her hips. “I have always justdone. I haven’t stopped to think about it. I do, and then it works or it doesn’t, but look where that got me!”
“Look where that got you? What part are you referring to? The part where you opened a cheese shop that sold a cheese you made of nothing that usually goes into a cheese but nonetheless won ‘best bloomed rind cheese’ in the world cheese awards? The part where you fell in love with someone who would move heaven and earth for you? The part where a foolish old woman handed you a turnkey inn without strings?”
Edie pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “All of those parts, Morag!”
“You need to stop thinking and figure it out.”
“Oh, well, that sounds like something a person can do.” Edie hated how petulant she had become.
“It’s not,” Morag said. “It’s not somethingaperson can do.”
And with that, she left.
Edie collapsed onto the step stool. She wished she could take a break from being Edie Whitelock for just one minute. She adjusted her position, then realized her phone was getting sat on and pulled it out.
Figure it out, but don’t think about it.
She didn’t let herself second-guess, she just dialed a number she’d been avoiding for weeks. The least helpful person she knew.
“Frog!” Her mother’s voice was loud against the background noise of her truck and the road. “Color me shocked.”
“Hi, Mom.” Edie scratched a drop of paint on her coveralls.
“How’s it going? Wait, hold on. Merge or be killed, jackass! Some of us have places to be!” Two long honks of her mom’s horn blared through the phone.
