Chapter 10
ELSIE
Morning light turns the lace curtains in the kitchen the color of skim milk. I strike a match, lean in, and coax the stove’s left burner into a shy blue flame. It catches with a soft whoomph that sends a curl of hair skittering off my forehead.
“Okay,” I tell it. “We’re friends now. Calm yourself.”
For a second, I swear the flame steadies. Is it wishful thinking? Maybe it’s a figment of my imagination, or maybe I just like talking to something that won’t argue back.
The iron skillet is heavy and a little warped. I set it to heat and dig through the cabinets for coffee and anything that might pass for breakfast. I’m not much of a cook; I lean on microwave dinners and protein bars, the kind of stuff you can eat in your car without a plate.
Still, I rummage. The sugar tin has a faded label in Elspeth’s neat script. It stops me mid-motion. Strange, how familiar it all is, and how wrong it feels to stand among things I’ve always known but worked so hard to forget.
On the counter sits the pale blue tin I found yesterday. First aid. A brand-new kit, stocked with gauze, tape, wipes—everything needed to patch a wound. Wells swore he didn’t know where it came from, only that it hadn’t been there before. Unsettled, I shift it aside.
As the kettle sings, I grind a pinch of cinnamon with the mortar and pestle. The coffee drips, slow and dark, filling the kitchen with a scent that makes it feel less like a museum I’ve trespassed in and more like a place where people actually live. Where I live, for now.
Eggs. I can do eggs.
The utensil drawer sticks half an inch from closed. I tug; it releases with a soft sigh and practically hands me the whisk I was searching for. I blink at it, then at the ceiling.
“Thank you,” I say, which is ridiculous, but the house has been trying, I think. And it feels polite to answer.
I whisk the eggs with a splash of milk, salt, and pepper. A handful of chives grows in a cracked pot by the window—someone’s been keeping them alive. The skillet is ready. Butter goes in, melts, runs. The scent loosens my shoulders.
Boots thump in the hallway. The door swings, and Wells fills the space behind me, tan work coat unzipped, bandage neat around his palm. His hair is a little darker when it’s damp from outside; the ends curl at his collar.
He stops at the threshold, eyes moving from the stove to the counter to me. For a moment, his expression hovers between suspicion and surprise.
“You’re making breakfast?”
“I’m capable of cooking, too.”
He reaches past me and turns the flame a hair lower. “That burner runs hot.”
“And now I know,” I say, batting his wrist with the back of the spatula. “Sit.”
He leans a hip against the counter instead. Typical. I slide the eggs into the skillet. They fold and set, pale yellow, flecked with green. I push them around like I know what I’m doing and choose my next sentence with care.
“I made coffee,” I say. “Do you take it the same way I do? Elspeth’s special?”
“Always liked it that way.”
“Good answer,” I say and pour.
He takes the mug, sniffs. “This is a lot of cinnamon, yeah?”
“Just a pinch.”
He sips, fights a smile, loses. “Not terrible.”
I put a hand to my heart. “Your generosity overwhelms me.”
“That’s what I’m known for.”
The toaster situation is trickier. It’s the kind of ancient that probably belonged to my grandmother’s grandmother, Dorothea. I turn the dial to a cautious setting and watch the coils glow. The bread edges curl and crisp. I pull the lever when the smell shifts from warm to warning.
“Don’t breathe over it like it’s a bomb,” Wells says. “You’re hovering.”
“And you’re loitering.”
With a huff, he moves to the far side of the table. I set a plate in front of him, then mine across from his. Eggs, toast, a spoonful of Mirabelle jam from the back of the fridge. Two forks. Two knives. Two napkins folded better than my mood.
He eyes the plate. “You don’t have to bribe me. It’s not gonna sway my decisions about the property.”
“It’s not a bribe. I’m trying to be a person who contributes. If I’m living here for upwards of sixty days, I can’t sit around and wait for things to happen.”
He tries the eggs and doesn’t make a face. Encouraging.
I take a bite of toast and crunch too loudly. He lifts a brow.
“I like it like this,” I say.
“Like what? On the edge of carbon?”
“It’s called texture.”
“Sure,” he says as he reaches for the jam. He passes me the jar without being asked. The motion is easy, thoughtless, and it warms me more than the coffee.
We eat. It isn’t silent, exactly. The house has its own sounds—the kettle’s soft breath, the radiator’s polite knock, the clock in the parlor insisting on being heard through the walls. Wells drinks his coffee in steady swallows and keeps glancing at the bandage on his hand.
“How’s it feel?” I ask.
“Like I tried to shake hands with a lawnmower.”
“We should rewrap it after breakfast.”
“We?” He chews, considers. “You planning to fail upward into nursing?”
“Again,” I murmur, “I’m contributing to the household.”
I take a big bite of eggs so I won’t say something reckless. He watches me pretend the fork is fascinating. When I’ve proven I won’t jab him with it, he sets his mug down with a quiet click.
“Ground rules,” he says.
“For the kitchen? I only scrubbed the pan with a sponge, no soap.”
“I mean for us,” he clarifies. “I propose we don’t talk about the committee outside of official meetings. No designation arguments over breakfast, lunch, or dinner. You want to discuss it, bring it to the agenda. Otherwise, the house gets to stay the house I’ve come to know and love.”
“You’re compartmentalizing,” I say. “I’ve been told that’s not healthy.”
It’s what I do best. I’ve spent years sorting things into tidy boxes so I can keep moving—work here, feelings there, exhaustion somewhere far enough away that I can pretend it doesn’t touch anything else. It’s not noble. It’s survival. And I know it’s flawed.
“Despite my desire to argue with everything you say, I’m kindly keeping us from killing each other.” He dips his chin toward my plate. “And you can spare me the sweetness if it’s just cover for poking the hornet’s nest.”
I swallow. “I’m making breakfast because I live here and because I have two hands.”
“And I have one and a half, at the moment,” he says, lifting the bandage.
“Which is why I’m asking you to let me help,” I say. “I can’t twiddle my thumbs waiting for meetings. Keep teaching me things. Show me what needs to be done. Anything, and I swear I’ll be useful.”
He gives me a long, unreadable look. The bandage pulls when he flexes, and he winces before he can stop himself.
“No more ladders,” he says. “Not this week.”
“I can keep two feet on the ground.”
“We’ll start with the boiler,” he says. “And the sash windows. And the porch rail that keeps threatening to splinter in the middle.”
“See?” I say, too quickly. “A list.”
“A small list,” he says. “And you follow my directions. No improvising.”
“I am excellent at following directions I agree with.”
“That doesn’t reassure me.”
“Fine. I will be obedient and humble.”
“That isn’t believable, either,” he says and finally smiles.
I pour him more coffee. He cuts another piece of toast and examines the burn pattern.
“You know you can put butter in the pan after you toast it,” he says. “It won’t taste like charcoal.”
“You just like to show off,” I say, but I reach for the butter anyway. He takes the knife from my hand and does the thing for me. The toast hisses when it meets the skillet, takes on a gloss and a smell that makes my mouth water in a way I resent.
He flips it, slides it onto my plate, and sits back. “You’re welcome.”
“Thank you,” I say, because I’m trying, and because he did make it better.
We gather plates. I move to the sink. The water takes a second to run hot; the house must consider every request before it agrees. I respect that about it. Wells comes behind me with the last of the silverware. The edge of his jacket brushes my arm. Every nerve I have notices.
“I meant it,” I say to the drain. “I know you probably think I’m in over my head and that you didn’t want me to sit on the committee.” He gives me a look, and I add, “Which I won’t bring up again outside official meetings. But I do truly appreciate you taking the time to include me in the work.”
He rests the wet forks on the towel and studies my profile. “You want to be useful,” he says, not a question.
“I want to not feel like a ghost.”
The faucet sputters, then smooths. He picks up a plate to dry.
“Boiler at eleven,” he says. “We’ll see how you feel about usefulness after that.”
“Can’t wait,” I say, and I almost mean it.
He takes his mug back to the table, drinks the last swallow, and sets it down. “An addendum to the rule,” he adds.
I brace. “Yes?”
“If you’ve changed your mind about the sale, we can talk. But that comes first, and you tell me straight.”
My hands still in the soapy water. “I won’t change my mind.”
He pushes his chair in. I wipe my hands and look around for a towel. The one I used earlier has vanished. The drawer with linens slides open a few inches on its own, and I stare at it despondently.
“Stop being helpful,” I whisper to the house, then glance back to see if Wells noticed. He didn’t.
The magic has been off since Elspeth passed—I know that from the cold drafts, the dangling locks, the silences where whispers and chimes used to be. But now it seems to be showing up in these small, persistent gestures, as if it’s straining to prove it still matters.
Comforting, because her absence didn’t drain it forever. Dreadful, because every flicker and sigh feels like the house is still trying to care for me, and I don’t know what to do with that.
Wells lifts his bandaged hand, and I’m thankful for the distraction. “Rewrap?”
I guide him to the light by the window and carefully unwind the bandage. The cut looks a little less angry, the edges already pulling together. Mirabelle salve in a clay jar. The smell of dandelion stem clings to his skin, smoke and mineral and something green.
“This is working,” I say. “But that seems to be the last of it.”
He gives a small grunt of disappointment. I dab with a clean pad, wrap fresh gauze, anchor with tape I found in the blue tin. My hands remember what to do. He holds still, jaw tight, eyes on my shoulder instead of my face.
“There,” I say, smoothing the last edge.
He looks down at my fingers still on his skin. I lift them and step back. The space between us fills itself, the way it always does in this house, with the pop of a log in the parlor and the idea that we could be something like a team if we let ourselves.
It might be easy to spar with Wells, to argue until one of us gave in, but under different circumstances—without the weight of this house between us—I think we might have been friends already.