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 two weeks since Cosima left, and two days 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 had called 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.
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 to tell 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, so Agatha can 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 am aware.”
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, nor have you paid me to extend your stay, and you haven’t tried to talk to Cosima.”
“I have tried!”
“What? You’ve texted her? 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 it is!” Now Edie’s hands were on her hips. “I have always just done. 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 something a person 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.
“Should I call back?”
“What? No! This is a good time, Froggie. I’m just driving. Not doing anything.”
Edie rolled her eyes. “So, you may have noticed that I’m not there.”
“That’s good, because I don’t have time to get you from the airport. I picked up another shift. I’m trying to double up so I can buy a Jet Ski for the lake before my vacation in June. But when are you coming? The jet lag’s not going to be your friend for your first week.”
“When I’m coming is kind of why I’m calling.
I mean, not to decide when. To talk about why I’m not there yet?
And the job. I should talk about that, too, but I’m not sure what to say.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate how many strings you pulled for me, and those culinary science jobs with the nice benefits are hard to get, I know.
Really, it should be a dream. Maybe I should call HR and talk to them?
I can get the start date moved, or—who was the woman you’re talking to? ”
“Frog,” her mom cut in. Edie realized she didn’t hear the road anymore. “I’ve pulled into the Pamperin Park lot. Remember when I’d take you and your brothers here? And the time Ethan fell into Duck Creek and you went after him and grabbed him by the diaper and hauled him right up?”
“I remember,” Edie said. She would not cry. She was not calling her mom from camp, homesick. She hadn’t actually been sent to camp unless you counted the Parks and Rec city program that was drop-in childcare, which she did not. “I don’t know what to do.”
It was the only thing left to say.
It was the first time, maybe—the first time she could remember—that she’d ever said it to her mom.
“What about?” her mom asked softly. “About the inn, or about this girl?”
“About the—what?” Edie held the phone out and looked at it, then brought it back to her ear. “How do you know about the inn or the girl?”