Chapter 12
12
S tarting later than she had in the past, Flora walked the miles and miles back to work the next day.
The rain was a soft spray, relentless on her face, and the sun seemed too weak to rise. There was only the suggestion of sun. The sky was goose-down gray, soft and endless, but uninviting, and the closer Flora got to the mansion, to the grounds of Rainshadow, the more she felt a feeling of foreboding, of a corner turned.
The horse, Bane, was dead.
Perhaps his corpse still lay curled around the rocks below the cliffside, and Sylvia still did not want her, despite what Ethan had said. She was used to being places where she was not wanted, though, wasn’t she? The thought made her defiant, strengthened her. Sylvia did not want her there, but it wasn’t Sylvia’s house. Sylvia wasn’t from the island, hadn’t bent to tend the lavender with her own bare hands for years and years. She hadn’t paid for the estate with her own money, the way that Ethan had. Sylvia was a sick, bitter interloper in Flora’s home, in Ethan’s life.
Flora pushed away the poisonous thoughts.
Rainshadow, after a week of her absence, was gray, muddy, and ill-kept. Everything on the island started to look gray and muddy this time of year, but the grazing paddock looked especially dark and plodded upon, and the lavender fields were all the same sad taupe shade.
Zeta and Mars were both fine. That was a relief. Both of them had bright eyes and seemed alert and healthy. They both probably needed exercise, but Sylvia was nowhere to be found. Her car was missing, and Flora briefly wondered if she’d gone to a doctor or something in the city.
After doing her daily chores around the barn, Flora put Zeta on a lead rope and led her to the practice arena, which was clean and dry, the powerful outdoor heaters already running. She put Zeta on a long practice line and started working her, only using simple techniques she was familiar with.
Flora was, of course, not an expert at dressage, but she was able to give Zeta a decent workout, having her trot, then canter, in sweeping circles around her, changing the horse’s gait with a click of her tongue or the softest touch of the whip. She worked Zeta, then, more carefully, Mars, who she thought might still be recovering from whatever had made him so ill the week before.
She had started late, and worked late. The most honest part of herself admitted why—she wanted to see Ethan. Sylvia did not show herself for the entire day, and Flora wondered how the horses were fed or exercised if she didn’t come. The stalls were clean, though, and the horses were well cared for, so someone had been doing at least some of the daily work.
After she meticulously groomed Mars and put him away for the afternoon, she looked around for something else to do. Just then, Sylvia made her appearance in the barn, dragging a bucket of feed. It was only a forty-pound bucket, but Sylvia dragged it like it weighed a hundred.
Flora called to her. “Do you need help?”
Sylvia startled when she saw Flora.
“I’m sorry,” Flora said. “Didn’t Ethan tell you I was coming back?”
Sylvia stared at her for a moment, but instead of looking angry and defiant, as Flora expected, she only seemed resigned. “Carry this bucket in,” she said, indicating the blue feed bucket she’d dragged from the driveway. “I have more in the car.”
“No,” said Flora, “I’ll get them. You just… relax.”
“Relax, sure,” Sylvia said, snorting with angry laughter at the word. But she did sit down, on a bale of hay, and leaned her head against the wall. For a moment she did look relaxed, and Flora saw what a beautiful woman Sylvia might have once been. Not just pretty. Sylvia was beautiful, model beautiful, like a movie star, with her raven hair, high cheekbones, and full, dark lips. A flame of something, jealousy, flared inside of Flora. She was younger than Sylvia. She was not sick and run down, but she would never have the same stark, haunting glamour. Flora was young, and she was pretty, but she was not, and never would be beautiful. It was one more thing that wasn’t fair, the universe rewarding some and not others with privilege, beauty, and riches, while others, others who deserved it even more, had nothing.
The darkness of night began to fall before it was even four in the afternoon. The howling wind grew louder, whipping up the cliffside and around the mansion like a phantom, threatening, insisting. Flora felt an eerie dread, and did not want to walk home, did not want to even be outside anymore.
When she saw Ethan walking, coatless, his white shirt fluttering and his fine, silvery blond hair blowing around his neck and face, she was relieved. Sylvia looked asleep in the barn when she put away the last of the feed and supplies from the car, and then she went out to meet Ethan where he stood at the cliffside, his hands in his pockets. Flora walked to meet him and only then looked over the cliffside. Bane was not there. He had drifted away, or been removed.
“Oh, hello,” he shouted over the sound of the wind and the sea crashing on the rocks below. “Are you done for the day?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess I need to go home.”
“Beautiful night,” he said, looking out at the stormy black clouds that bled into the total darkness of the sea.
“If you say so,” Flora said, pulling her coat tight around her.
“Let me drive you home,” Ethan said, looking at her. “You can’t walk in this weather.”
“Where did you work before?” Ethan asked her, driving slowly as the rain picked up.
He wasn’t being careful, Flora thought. He was prolonging his time with her.
“I worked downtown,” she said, “at that grocery store.”
“Right. King’s Market.”
“I liked it there well enough,” she said. “But the owner’s son…” She didn’t go on, just looked out of the window and took a deep breath.
“You… dated him?”
Flora snorted. “No, god no,” she said. “He wanted to date me, but he tried to… sleep with me, I guess, then got me fired when I didn’t reciprocate.”
“He tried to… force you?” There was something in Ethan’s voice, a coiled serpent of anger.
She was going to correct him. Matt had been a jerk, but he had not tried to rape her or anything. Ethan’s voice though, the protectiveness in it, warmed something inside of her. She wanted more of it, the feeling that he cared about her, was upset on her behalf.
“Yes,” she whispered, looking out of the car window so she didn’t have to meet his eye when he glanced over. “I’m ok, though,” she insisted, forcing herself to sound brave. “I’m fine.”
They drove for a while in silence.
“What was his name again?”
“Matt King,” Flora said, as though it were painful for her to repeat the name.
Ethan stared straight ahead and drove onward, toward her home.
When she slipped inside of the bus, her mother was up, waiting for her.
“Well,” Maureen said, looking up at her, her eyes bright and cold. “Look who it is.”
“Hi, Mom,” Flora said, glancing around, like there may be some clue as to why her mother was waiting for her.
“I got a call today.”
“Oh?”
“From the Seattle Police Department.”
Flora stared at her mother. Her heart thumped. What had she been thinking, giving them her home phone number?
“They asked for you, said they were wondering if you could come in for an interview.”
“Really?” Flora’s face brightened.
“Oh, Flora,” Maureen said, shaking her head. “Mounted police? Really? You?”
Flora went cold. “I think I could?—”
“You couldn’t, Flora,” her mother said, laughing. “You’re a little mouse! You couldn’t be a cop!”
“I think?—”
“You think you could?” Maureen laughed again. “You can’t! You can’t leave this island!”
“I have to—” Flora began to insist.
“You have to stay here!” Maureen shouted. “I need you. I can’t be alone, and you can’t be alone. You wouldn’t be able to manage! Don’t you see that?”
“No,” Flora whispered, but her mother only cackled.
“I told them that you were not going to come to an interview now or ever. I told them that you were a scared little mouse, and that you lied on your resume.”
Flora stared at her mother, stunned. Up until that moment, she had believed that her mother had not helped because she didn’t care, was indifferent and unhelpful, but not that she would actually wreck any effort to leave. The thought that her mother had sabotaged her was too painful to bear, and she wanted to run out into the night, to run and run, until what? Until she got to Rainshadow, of course.
The wind howled outside of the rickety bus. She wasn’t going anywhere and she knew it. She looked at her mother, answering coldness with coldness.
“I’ll find a way to get away from you,” she said. “And know, when I leave, that will be it for us, do you understand? I would have helped you. Now, you can forget about it.”
Her mother smirked, as if to say “We’ll see,” but Flora ignored her and retreated to her tiny bedroom. After she changed, brushed her teeth, and crawled into her bunk, she lay awake and thought about Ethan, the way he looked at her, with something—was it hope? Hope for something different than the miserable life he had with Sylvia? Could it be that they needed each other? They were both stuck in these… relationships.
Maybe they could save each other.