Chapter 4 Snowdrops
Eloise Snowdrop Willow settled into a gentle rhythm at The Lost Souls House with Ursula.
She moved into the perfect marshmallow lemon room with what little she brought.
They cooked together, she helped Ursula with her growing plant business, teaching her a fraction of the encyclopedia of information that was stored in her brain about every plant and what they could do, how they grew best, what they needed.
This new plant talent of hers was astonishing.
Dinner club was a regular thing planned for twice a month, but in actuality often happened weekly.
Christmas at The Lost Souls House was an earthly, sparkling affair.
The Douglas Fir that they decorated with thin gold glass balls and dried orange slices was so tall that the gold star on top brushed against the wood-beamed ceiling.
The smell was gentle until Eloise circled the great tree, the tips of her fingers brushing along the strong needles and, unbeknownst to her, cajoled a smell of Christmas fir into the room and throughout the house.
They decorated with red, black and gold throughout, keeping with the macabre theme of The Lost Souls House.
Clear and glittering icicles dripped from the mantle, the original wood window sills and the evergreen sprigs of the Christmas tree.
The dinner club had a secret Santa dinner of individual roasted cornish hens with orange and rosemary stuffing, mashed potatoes, honey yeast rolls with rosemary sea salt butter and cranberry old fashions.
They were instructed to draw a name and then gift them a book that they felt would fit their aura.
Eloise was drawn by Kelsea and she was gifted a book about women changing later in life to become more their younger, feral selves in the forms of animals. She read it in two days and laughed throughout. She felt she would become either a clever fox or a soaring, watchful hawk herself.
Christmas passed, snow fell in heavy white drapes three times that winter creating a thick and cozy time inside of the old, beautiful house.
She'd gotten to know Jenson and Bess. He had proven without hassle to be a good fit for Ursula.
And she easily fell in love with Bess, her teenage disgruntled charm a sheath over an incredibly sweet heart.
Bess celebrated her sixteenth birthday at the house with fifteen of her friends moseying around the downstairs enjoying the vintage jazz theme with a live band playing covers of artists like Diana Krall and Norah Jones.
The panic that caught hold of Eloise when this sixteen-year-old called Norah Jones vintage made Ursula laugh as she'd had a similar reaction.
One friend in particular, who made Ursula narrow her eyes as she watched him like a hawk, seemed to be more than a friend.
A handsome teenager that got people to laugh easily and always had his hand somewhere on Bess.
Eloise and Ursula watched her blush under his attention, but there was something about him that wove discomfort to both women.
Bess made them all, especially Jenson, agree to say nothing that would embarrass her, so of course they simply spied from doorways and shared full-sentenced yet silent thoughts with whispered promises of his demise if he hurt her.
Not to Bess or the boy, of course, but still their silent promises followed them through rooms causing the flickering of candle flames.
Everything was blue and silver, with low lighting, dangling silver stars, and bobbing lights in the back garden where they lit a large bonfire.
The dinner club made canapes in the kitchen while dancing to jazz as Bess and her guests mingled, and laughed outside. Skirt steak with whipped goat cheese, crab-stuffed mushroom caps, sweet potato chips with creamy feta and dill.
"I had a one-night stand yesterday," Jen announced as Eloise was placing a swirl of balsamic on the apricot and cream cheese mini naans while Norah's notes from What Am I to You played.
All the women looked up at her. She was leaning back against the stove in her classy black dress and pearl drop earrings glittering in the warm kitchen lights.
"I met her at a fundraiser for that nutrition for older women thing in Nashua.
She was hot. I hadn't had sex in a while, like an embarrassingly long time and she had a hotel room," she said as she shrugged.
"Was it good?" Crystal asked. She filled a silver tray with small bites and motioned to Jenson who was playing server tonight.
He came in, kissed Ursula in that way that said he didn't want to leave the room without touching her.
Eloise had been witnessing them for two months now and to see her most precious friend be treated like she was indeed precious was such a special thing.
He was a quiet man, didn't feel the need to use too many words but when he did speak it mattered. She liked people like that.
The art of being pithy was far too overlooked in a world where people had a tendency to ramble on and on and dance around a topic rather than grab its hand and go straight to the dance floor. Say more with less, her dad had always said.
"It was fantastic. I came three times," Jen said and they laughed and made happy oohing sounds. Jen had an edge to her, sometimes a crassness that Eloise appreciated. She was bold and she wasn't apologetic unless she crossed a line.
"I haven't had sex in too long, but I need it to be with someone I trust and I haven't dated or wanted to in a while," Tilly admitted. "I also have terrible taste in men," she admitted. Jen agreed with wide eyes and a bold nod of her head.
Eloise could imagine Tilly, sweet and more on the quiet side until you knew her, meeting a man that made her blush and laugh.
"I don't want to date for like three years," Kelsea said with a laugh. A month into Eloise being there the young woman had shared over coffee that she'd been scarred from a scandal with a married man and was working through the guilt of that.
She had a soft spot for her, hoping she would learn the difference between guilt and shame.
Kelsea started teaching a class on journalism at a nearby community college, as well as coaching high school girls soccer.
She was at that interesting age of no longer being an innocent girl, but not yet being an experienced knowing woman.
"I had marvelous sex two days ago," Crystal announced.
Eloise looked at the goddess with silver hair as she picked up her honey wine and sipped in her sparkling white and silver gown that hugged her middle a little more than it had two years ago.
"He was so thorough. A woman definitely taught him how to strum a woman's body," she said thoughtfully.
"I am so glad that we have great sex to look forward to in our older age," Jen said.
Crystal turned a questioning look toward Jen. "How old do you think I am?"
Slight panic settled into Jen's eyes. "I.
..do not know how to answer this," she said carefully.
"Because on the one hand, you are this sage, wise woman who I have come to lean on and trust and if you looked me dead in the eye and told me you are three hundred years old I would believe you without hesitation.
" All the other women nodded in silent agreement, the food preparation finished as the party was winding down in the background and teenagers started leaving.
Jen continued. "On the other hand, you have this childlike unfettered air about you and your skin is confusingly unlined and soft so.
.." she looked at Ursula and Tilly who were closest to her, and then Kelsea and Eloise who all shrugged, "Anyone want to help me out here? "
"I'm with Jen," Ursula said. "You could tell me you're three hundred or ageless or thirty and I would believe you."
Crystal's eyes twinkled and she winked. "I suppose being mysterious is one of the most magical things about a woman in any stage of life."
"Amen to that," Tilly said.
"I'm not so keen on the mysteriousness of this stage of life," Eloise lamented. "Headaches and weight gain, sudden bouts of anxiety out of nowhere."
Crystal smiled knowingly. "The headaches will cease and you'll lose the weight that no one else can see but you and suddenly you'll bobble into a stage of peace the world forgot to promise you."
Kelsea took the bottle of Tilly's honey wine and poured the remaining amber liquid into everyone's delicate flutes.
"To being women, mysterious creatures that keep the world guessing," she said with lifted glass.
Glasses clinked beautifully as the vanilla tobacco candlelight caught the honey alcohol in a kiss of light as they cheered.
They ended the night with each woman draped over Ursula's couch and chairs, Kelsea with her younger body laid on the woven rug as the firelight licked them into a tired kind of happiness until they each found their way to a guest room to sleep.
That night Eloise and Ursula walked to the graveyard in their jazzy sparkling dresses with moonlight lanterns, Casper and Sulphur by their side, to visit the lost souls, who were no longer lost. Eloise loved their story, how it came out, and how the young women who had been seen as unfair villains and killed for it had finally found peace.
They stayed here, having found a home in what Ursula and the other women had created for them; a place to simply be.
They went out every other night, sitting in the graveyard, soaking in the calm and the true serenity as the night wrapped around them and the milky moon gathered her star children in a collection of beautiful night-time peace.