27. Recovery
Recovery
Pearl stared in horror at the place where Driz had been. The place where she had left a stain of spattered blood.
Pearl ran toward it, senselessly. When she looked up, she caught the sight of a winged figure disappearing into the darkness. It was past the deepest part of night already. Dawn wasn’t so far away.
Driz had to be alright.
She whirled on her mother, stumbling as her weakened body fought against her. Fuck her body. She fought back. Forced it to work.
“Calm down, Pea.”
“You don’t get to tell me that. You shot her.”
“I…didn’t mean to.”
Pearl shook her head. She didn’t believe that. “I hate you.” She couldn’t look at her.
Molly was outside, watching. Along with apparently everyone else in this town. Molly held out her hand in silent invitation and Pearl staggered over to her.
“Nothing to see here,” Pearl called, meeting a few gawking eyes, which quickly turned away.
Pearl glanced toward the stables. Her first thought was to ride after Driz again.
“You’ll just kill yourself,” Molly murmured, understanding Pearl too well. “At least wait until morning. Come on.”
Exhausted and jittery at once, Pearl followed Molly into her darkened home.
“Get in bed,” Molly instructed.
“No.”
“Get in bed, Pearl.”
Pearl climbed in. She wore only her half-buttoned shirt and trousers, but didn’t bother to remove them. She sniffed, her head still clogged from her sickness.
“It’s alright, doll,” Molly said, lifting herself in beside her.
“I’m not crying,” Pearl protested.
“Yeah, I can see that.” Molly’s callused fingers brushed Pearl’s cheek, wiping away the evidence of her lie. “I met Driz earlier tonight.”
Pearl tensed.
“What a big sweetie. Not at all what I expected. And she complimented my pie.”
“Because you make the best.”
“I do. But that’s beside the point. She’s been outside both nights, asking after you.”
“Really?” Pearl hated how her insides flipped and how pitiful she sounded.
“Until your mother talked to her.”
The warmth evaporated. “I don’t wanna talk about the sheriff.”
“Fair.”
Pearl shut her eyes, but her clogged head continued to leak out of them, along with her heart. “I miss her,” Pearl whispered. Gods, she was pathetic. “But I don’t know how to have her. Or if she’ll want me anymore.”
“I doubt anything as small as one more bullet will stop her.”
Pearl could only see Driz’s heartbreakingly betrayed face. And her anger. Pearl had to admit it had frightened her, when Driz had roared like that and her intimidating nature flared. Pearl had felt it. She recalled the cinderwolf breaking apart beneath Driz’s frenzied hands.
Driz was dangerous. But Pearl dismissed the thought at once. She trusted Driz. She knew her. Driz would never hurt Pearl, or anyone Pearl loved. Even when pushed beyond reason. Even tonight, when she dug up the grave of her birth mother without realizing it.
Pearl was going to be sick in a new way.
Pearl should have told Driz the truth earlier.
She needed to hold Driz. Not only to make sure she was physically well, but to comfort her. Pearl was shit at comforting, but she could try. She hated the thought of Driz out there alone. Again. Because her mother had shot her. Again.
Driz had told Pearl she was worth it. But how many bullets would she endure before she realized Pearl wasn’t?
Driz sat on the bluff and watched the faint light of town.
Two nights had passed since she’d left. Since she had been shot the most recent time.
As a moth was drawn to fire, she returned to this spot each night. She hadn’t ventured closer, and wasn’t certain she would ever again. But being too far away filled her with agitation and a deep longing. So here she sat, trapped and miserable.
She’d seen a rider coming toward her last night. She thought it might have been Pearl, and wasn’t certain she was strong enough to turn away if she saw her. So Driz had fled instead of finding out.
It was too tempting to simply forgive everything and allow Pearl to find her. To crawl back, begging for the scraps of Pearl’s attention.
That dismissive, staying hand repeated in Driz’s mind and hurt worse than any bullet. Such a simple gesture. Driz had wanted to run to Pearl. To hold her. To touch her.
Pearl hadn’t.
Driz had never felt so different. So far from her.
Driz returned to the grave of her birth mother, but Oak must have beaten her to it during the day and re-covered the skeleton.
Driz dug it up again. She also took all the stones collected in the strange shrine and scattered them through the surrounding valleys.
If the human attempted to rebury the bones, Driz would simply take them away as well.
She would move them somewhere Oak could not get to.
Driz found herself strangely possessive of them. They were her bones now.
Pearl had known Oak had killed Driz’s mother. And she hadn’t told Driz. Why?
Driz wished she knew the whole story. Why had Oak done it? How had she met Driz? Driz didn’t remember meeting her, but she did have that strange sense that they had. Was their meeting the reason why Driz was so different from her kind? The cause of her fascination with humans?
She wished she could ask Oak. But getting shot hurt, and she’d rather not wear another scar if she didn’t have to. She was already ugly enough.
Pearl stayed at Molly’s for as long as she could. Sheriff Oak came by, but Pearl wasn’t ready to speak to her yet. She helped Molly with her work, doing some of the basic stitching for her. The limited amounts Molly would allow her to do. She had high standards, as she should.
The fever and stuffiness subsided by the end of the next day, and she could function normally once more, apart from a lingering cough. And the constant ache in her chest she didn’t think was related, and which she stubbornly ignored.
People talked. When Pearl ventured out to Macey’s General for some flour for Molly, she noticed the stares as well. They’d seen a dark shape over the bluffs last night. Pearl’s insides fluttered and knotted.
As soon as it was dusk, she took her horse, whom she was relieved had been found by the sheriff’s search parties for her, and rode toward the ravine. But no one waited. No beautifully terrifying goyle.
It was strange to stand in what she now considered their place without Driz. Pearl waited, vaguely hopeful, but Driz didn’t come.
Pearl shouldn’t have expected her to. But a part of her had.
Pearl had screwed up. Again. The thought of it costing her Driz made the panic in her chest expand.
If Driz wasn’t here, it meant she didn’t want to see Pearl. That truth grated against her skin, but she would give Driz space. She didn’t have much choice.
The third night after she finished her pathetic waiting adventure, her mother finally cornered her.
Pearl needed a fresh pair of clothes and snuck into the house, planning to be in and out in moments, but of course Sheriff Oak heard.
When Pearl reached the bottom of the darkened stairs, an unmistakable figure blocked the door.
“We need to talk,” Sheriff Oak said.
“I’m not in the mood.”
“Pearl.”
“Sheriff.”
Her mother let out a long sigh. “Let’s start with a drink.”
Pearl would need one, she was sure.
She edged sideways into their cramped kitchen and slumped in the chair closer to the front window. Farther from her mother.
The bottle clinked against the glasses. Pearl snatched the one slid in front of her and downed it, the burning liquid soothing her throat, already reaching for the bottle.
“I’m sorry.”
Pearl choked on her second glass. “You what?”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“What’re you sorry for? Shooting my sweetheart?”
“Sweetheart?”
Pearl grunted and refilled her glass again. “I dunno what else to call her.” Perhaps Pearl shouldn’t call her anything at all. That thought made her grip the glass harder. “Didn’t you hear me when I said I wouldn’t forgive you?”
“Alive and hating me is better than dead.”
“Fuck you. Why’d you have to provoke her? Make her dig that up?”
“To prove to you what she is.”
“To me? Or to you?”
Sheriff Oak didn’t answer.
“You wanted her to attack you. But she didn’t.”
“I know,” Sheriff Oak gritted back. “I was there.”
“And so was I. And everyone else in this godsforsaken town. I know very well what Driz is. Who she is. But you wouldn’t listen to me. You had to torment her instead.”
“I didn’t—”
“You never listen to me.” Pearl slammed the empty glass down on the wood.
“That’s not true.”
“Isn’t it?” Pearl shoved to her feet. “Thanks for the drink, Sheriff.”
She grabbed her clothes from the foot of the stairs and shouldered through the door, leaving her mother sitting at the table.
Anger burned hot, along with grief. That bourbon needed to hurry the hells up and kick in so she could sleep and not become trapped in her own head tonight. She wasn’t sure she could stand it.
She stumbled through Molly’s door to find her sleeping in the bed.
Pearl had shared it for too many nights.
An overwhelming fondness for the woman mixed with guilt at the thought of Driz.
Would Driz be angry that Pearl had slept with Molly?
They hadn’t been intimate. But they had in the past. Pearl didn’t want that to be another secret between them.
Pearl needed to see Driz. To ask her. To talk to her and explain they weren’t together in that way. She couldn’t mess this up yet again.
She ran back into the night. It was stupid, but since when had that stopped her? She ran to escape herself and her own thoughts.
A shape moved high on the bluff, filling Pearl with hope. “Driz!”
The shape shifted, and Pearl kept running past the salt fields. She called again, and her unsteady feet betrayed her. She sprawled forward. A yelp escaped her lips before she could stop it, more in surprise than pain as the sharp, thorny weeds stung her palms.
She managed to pick herself back up as the swoosh of wings made her heart leap.
Driz landed a distance away. “Are you hurt?”
Her rumbly voice sent need curling to Pearl’s toes. She missed Driz so much. “Yes,” Pearl breathed, not certain it was a lie.