Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
They were sprawled across the bed, Edith’s feet propped up on the headboard and Thomasin’s hanging off the end. Their heads lay in the center of the bed, only inches apart from each other as they both stared up at the ceiling, entranced by the spiderweb pattern of cracks and rot.
Thomasin’s hair kept tickling Edith’s face.
She giggled, batting the curls away. Edith’s own hair was loose around her shoulders.
She reached across and started crisscrossing her blonde strands with Thomasin’s dark brown curls.
The interlocking pattern of light and dark fascinated her.
Her facing one way, Thomasin the other, the way they met in the middle.
It reminded Edith of the yin-yang symbol she’d read about in one of her books.
She couldn’t quite remember what it meant, though.
She kept having thoughts, but when she’d try to follow the path of her thinking, she’d get lost. It was a happy kind of lost, though.
It just meant she could jump right into the next thought.
She was gloriously tethered to the moment.
The knot she’d tied with her and Thomasin’s hair undid itself. This made her frown for some reason. She felt Thomasin’s head loll against her shoulder. The other woman was watching her with heavy-lidded eyes. Her forefinger poked Edith’s lower lip.
“You’re sad?”
Edith laughed. “Your eyes are really bloodshot.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Pulling one of Thomasin’s curls closer to her face, she said, “You have really soft hair.”
Thomasin reached above her own head and stroked her hand across Edith’s hair like one might pet a cat. “You’re one to talk,” she repeated, which made them both fall into an inescapable fit of giggles.
“I wish my hair was curly like yours, though.” Edith pulled a curl and watched it snap back into a spiral.
“No, you don’t. Mine’s always a mess.”
“You just need to brush it more.”
Edith felt Thomasin’s head shake against her shoulder. “I never know what to do with all that girly stuff.”
“Why not?” Her lower lip pushed into a pout.
“No one to teach me, I guess. Mom died when I was little, and after that there was just Marshall. The only thing he taught me how to do was kill.”
“That has come in handy, though,” Edith mused aloud.
“And you’re very …” She trailed off, thinking about the lithe, predatory way that Thomasin moved when she was faced with an enemy.
The flex of her muscles and her leather jacket sprayed with blood.
The wild mane of her hair curtaining her face and her chest heaving from the exertion. “Fast,” Edith finished.
When Thomasin didn’t reply, Edith tilted her chin against her chest, craning until she could see Thomasin’s expression in the dim candlelight. Her bottom lip was pulled between her teeth, and her eyes were distant.
“I could teach you,” Edith offered.
“Teach me what?” Thomasin’s eyes flicked up to meet Edith’s, but her frown deepened.
“All the girly stuff!”
Her eyes narrowed. “Really? You’d do that?”
“Of course!”
Thomasin swiveled her head to look up at the ceiling once again. “Then yeah, sure. I mean, not that I really want to—need to do all that. And it’ll probably be stupid … but it might be fun too.”
Edith let her head drop against Thomasin’s shoulder this time. She was so strong. Edith liked the way it felt to be next to her, touching her. “It’s not stupid. I’ll teach you whatever you want.”
Thomasin met her eyes, and Edith stifled a laugh.
It was like when they talked about romance novels.
She hadn’t thought that shyness was in Thomasin’s repertoire, but here she was looking at her with wide eyes and an embarrassed tilt to her lips.
In a painfully hesitant tone, she said, “Can you show me how to paint my eyes like yours? I don’t understand how you get the pencil so straight, or how you get the color to be in the same shape on each eye. ”
Edith pressed her forehead against Thomasin’s. The angle strained her neck, but she didn’t care. “Thomasin Shaw, I would love nothing more than to show you how to do makeup.”
“Really?” Thomasin’s perfectly straight nose wrinkled.
“Yes,” Edith whispered. “On one condition.”
“Anything.”
“I want to learn how to protect myself. Teach me how to be more like you.”
Thomasin sighed, and Edith shivered at the feel of her breath against her face, at the idea of them sharing the same air.
“Oh Edith, the last thing you want is to be like me.” Edith opened her mouth to object, but Thomasin silenced her with a finger against her lips.
“But I’ll teach you how to defend yourself. ”
Edith wanted to argue with her, wanted to tell Thomasin that she admired her, that she’d be honored to even be just a little bit more like her. She wanted to ask her a thousand questions, like why did Thomasin feel so poorly about herself? How could Edith fix it?
But then a bird landed outside on the windowsill, and in the candlelight, Edith had never seen feathers so beautiful.
Only the bird flew away before Edith could get a closer look.
That was okay, though, because she noticed then that the stars had come out.
The twinkling lights called to her, and they seemed to call to Thomasin too, because they both fell into a deep silence, thoroughly lost in the place between one thought and the next.
Edith awoke, vaguely confused, to the sound of metal scratching against wood. The light coming in through the window was the cushy orange of early morning, and she was all alone in the room. The last thing she remembered was drifting off to sleep with Thomasin at her side.
Memories of the previous night flashed in her head, hazy and rose-colored.
She nuzzled her face deeper into the pillow, smiling into the scratchy fabric.
Edith Darling had smoked hash. She had officially cut loose and was now a brand-new person.
Fearless and reckless. Practically a criminal herself.
She wondered if her grandmother had ever partaken. Edith hoped that she had, because it had turned out to be a wonderfully fun experience. She hated the idea that her grandmother had spent her whole life cooped up in the family manor. It wasn’t fair that Edith got to escape while she never had.
Edith rolled onto her back, huffing a sigh, annoyed at her mind for drawing up such grim thoughts when she had been so happy only seconds before.
She stretched her arms out to the side, wincing as her injured shoulder protested the movement.
Funny, under the hash’s influence, she had barely noticed the pain.
It was still bandaged, although not quite so intensely as it had been immediately after the cauterization.
The salve that Jay had made had soothed the inflammation, and she was endlessly grateful for his assistance.
Thomasin’s too. She had helped her change the bandages every day, since it was at an awkward angle for Edith to do herself.
Of course, she’d felt guilty for being an imposition, but Thomasin had told her if she apologized one more time, she’d cut her whole arm off and be done with it.
The sheets on the side of the bed that Thomasin had occupied last night were cold.
Edith wondered where she was. It wasn’t like she had expected Thomasin to spend the night sleeping in her bed, but it still stung something deep inside Edith that she hadn’t.
She dragged her hands down her face. Edith needed to get ahold of herself.
It was stupid to let herself want Thomasin.
Stupid to admit she loved the way it had felt to fall asleep next to her.
The way their arms brushed. Knees bumping into thighs.
Edith’s elbow pressed against Thomasin’s bicep, telling herself that it was accidental contact, but being so afraid to move and lose the connection between them.
Thomasin was the kind of woman who slept with the chief inspector’s wife.
She probably had a different woman in her bed every night.
She didn’t get flustered by a little elbow graze like Edith did.
To convince herself that Thomasin might be attracted to her would just be to set herself up for embarrassment.
Besides, even if, by some miracle, Thomasin did share her feelings, what would Edith actually do?
She had no experience. It felt like playing a game with an expert while she knew none of the rules.
She didn’t know how to be with someone. In any sense of the word.
The metal scratching sound started up again, followed by a soft click.
Edith didn’t think anything of it until her door burst open.
A person with a burlap sack over their head stormed into the room.
They wore a floor-length black coat buttoned all the way up to their chin.
In their hand was a bloodied axe. For half a breath, Edith stared, stunned, at the little droplets of blood that fell from the blade to the floor.
She had once read about the theory of fight-or-flight reactions.
Turned out Edith had neither instinct. Clutching the blanket in her fists, she threw it over her head and curled up in a little ball beneath the covers.
Her heart pounded in her ears, and her rapid breath was hot and sticky in her little pocket under the blanket.
This was how she died. Too scared to run and too scared to fight.
She should’ve known it would end like this.
When faced with a difficult decision, Edith had always lingered in the middle ground, frozen and unable to act at all.
To be fair, though, she never could’ve predicted the axe murderer aspect.
“I can see you under there,” came a deep, guttural whisper.
If it was possible, Edith’s terror grew. It was the kind of voice that she’d read horror novels about. She covered her ears with her hands, pressing so tight that her jaw hurt. Pain rippled through her shoulder, but that was the least of her worries.
“Do you not have any fight in you?”