Chapter Four
The song wasn't coming.
Maeve glared at the notebook in front of her as if the blank page had personally offended her, which at this point it rather had.
She'd been sitting at the window seat for the better part of an hour, guitar across her lap, pencil in hand, and all she had to show for it was a single line that she'd already crossed out twice.
The morning light falls soft on—
Falls soft on what? The hills? Overdone. The heather? Cliché. Her own rapidly deteriorating sanity? Accurate, but difficult to rhyme.
She set the pencil down and looked out the window instead.
The view, at least, never disappointed. Rolling Scottish hills, gray-green under a moody sky that couldn't quite decide if it was going to rain or just threaten to.
The stone wall that marked the edge of her garden, or sheep-prison, if you preferred.
Eejit was currently attempting to eat the remains of what had once been a lavender bush.
Other than errant sheep, though, the garden was calm. Her life was calm. Her world was calm. Which was just how she liked it. Just how she needed it, even. She wasn’t at all sure she could function in any other way at this point.
Movement on the path caught her eye.
Someone was walking up toward the cottage. A woman, from the look of it, though she was still far enough away that Maeve couldn't make out details. Dark hair, shorter than Maeve, moving with purpose.
Council, probably. About the water. They'd been sending increasingly stern letters about the drainage situation, which Maeve had been ignoring with equal determination.
As if she had any idea how to fix nineteenth-century pipes on her own.
That was Glinna's department, technically speaking, though Glinna had enough on her plate with six children and several hundred of her sheep that actually stayed where they belonged.
The woman reached the garden gate.
Maeve watched, mildly curious, as the stranger lifted the latch and stepped through. Eejit raised her head from the ravaged lavender, considered the newcomer with what appeared to be great interest, and then…
Bit her.
"Christ!" The word carried clearly through the closed window.
Eejit, having made her point, returned to the lavender.
The woman was clutching her hand now, staring at the sheep with an expression of profound betrayal. And something about the way she stood, the angle of her shoulders, the particular set of her jaw as she processed this unexpected assault…
Maeve's stomach dropped.
No.
The woman turned toward the cottage, and Maeve saw her face clearly for the first time.
No, no, no.
Fifteen years. Fifteen bloody years of silence, of distance, of very carefully not thinking about certain things, and now Iona Faith was standing in her garden, bleeding on her stepping stones, and looking up at the cottage like she wasn't sure if she'd come to the right place.
Maeve sat very still.
Memories crashed over her without permission.
Secondary school corridors that smelled of floor polish and steamed cabbage.
Two girls huddled over a notebook, writing lyrics that they thought were profound and were probably terrible.
Mrs. Edwards, their drama teacher, throwing her hands up after yet another disruption: You two should be on the stage, not in my classroom.
They'd thought it was hilarious. They'd made it their whole identity.
The Stage Girls.
And the name had meant something good.
Back when Maeve had been young and stupid and convinced that talent was enough, that having a voice meant she deserved to use it, that the burning in her chest whenever Iona smiled at her was just adrenaline from performing and not something far more dangerous.
One kiss. One single, terrifying kiss that had changed everything and nothing and sent Maeve spiraling so hard she'd—
A knock at the door.
Maeve pressed her lips together.
Through the window, she could see Iona looking at her. Their eyes met. Iona's hand was still bleeding. She held it up with an expression that clearly said, well?
Maeve considered, very seriously, not answering.
She could pretend she hadn't been sitting right there in the window, staring out like some character in a gothic novel. She could stay perfectly still until Iona gave up and went away. She could avoid this conversation for another fifteen years, which frankly seemed like the sensible option.
She could pretend to be a statue of herself, perhaps. Or just… or just close her eyes and pretend that what she couldn’t see couldn’t see her back. Like Glinna’s Jack had used to do when he was small.
Iona raised her bleeding hand higher and pointed at it with her other hand, eyebrows climbing toward her hairline.
And she was just as… just as she used to be. The sharp chin, the determined face, those deep blue eyes and dark hair and…
And Maeve sighed.
She set aside the guitar, the useless notebook, the comfortable numbness she'd cultivated for over a decade. And she went to answer the door.
???
There was an image of Maeve stamped in Iona’s mind, a fifteen-year-old image that made her heart beat funny and her breath catch in her throat.
And there was a world where that image opened the door of a small, Scottish cottage and Iona poured out her real feelings, or said something smooth and suave or… something.
But when Iona opened her mouth as Maeve opened the door, what she actually said was, "Your sheep bit me."
Maeve seemed to consider that. Maeve with her red hair and her green eyes and her look of yesterday. Then she nodded. "Yes," she said. "She does that."
A pause. Neither of them spoke. Just in case, Iona thought, they might break something.
Then Maeve added, "And she's not my sheep."
Iona stared at her.
She'd had a plan coming here. She'd rehearsed what she was going to say on the entire train journey up from London, then again on the bus to the village, and then a final time during the long walk up the track to this improbably remote cottage.
She'd had sensible, measured words prepared.
An appeal to professionalism. A calm explanation of the situation.
What she had not prepared for was standing on a doorstep in the middle of nowhere, bleeding onto ancient stone, while Maeve Maureen MacDonnell looked at her like she was a particularly inconvenient parcel that had been delivered to the wrong address.
Fifteen years.
She'd changed. Of course she'd changed, people changed in fifteen years.
Her hair was longer, falling past her shoulders in the same impossible red that had always made Iona think of autumn leaves and warning signs.
There were lines at the corners of her eyes that hadn't been there before.
She was wearing an oversized jumper that looked like it had been washed four hundred times, and she was barefoot despite the cold, and she looked like she'd been living at the edge of the world on purpose.
But her eyes were the same. That particular shade of green that Iona had never been able to adequately describe, not even in the privacy of her own head, the green of deep water and growing things and trouble.
The first day of secondary school. Iona had been small and terrified and completely overwhelmed by the massive building full of massive older students, and then she'd seen Maeve MacDonnell stalking down the corridor like she owned the place, like she wasn't afraid of anything, like the world owed her an explanation and she was going to get it.
Iona had thought: that girl is terrifying.
And then: I want to be her friend.
And then, somehow, inexplicably, she had been.
Swept into Maeve's orbit like she'd never had any choice in the matter.
Writing songs in the back of English class.
Forming a band in Ellie's garage. Playing their first gig at a local pub when they were far too young to be there.
Becoming something, together, before it all fell apart.
Before Maeve fell apart, and took everything else with her.
She's not going to let me in, Iona thought, watching Maeve's face be unreadable. She'd come all this way for nothing. Maeve was going to shut the door, and that would be that, and Iona would have to go back and tell Cam and Ellie that—
Maeve stepped back and opened the door wider. "You're bleeding all over my steps," she said flatly. "It'll never come out."
"I…" Iona blinked. "Right. Sorry."
"Don't apologize to me, apologize to the steps." But Maeve was already turning away, walking down a narrow hallway lined with what appeared to be shelves full of vinyl records and books all mixed together in no particular order. "Kitchen's this way."
Iona followed, mostly because she didn't know what else to do.
The cottage was small but surprisingly warm, full of mismatched furniture and the kind of comfortable clutter that suggested someone actually lived here, rather than just existed.
A guitar leaned against a chair by the window.
An ancient Aga radiated heat in the corner of the kitchen.
Iona’s hand throbbed, and she hoped that she wasn’t dripping a trail of blood behind her.
And it smelled like Maeve.
All of it.
That indescribable scent of patchouli and damp and vanilla and wet leaves and something that was just… Maeve.
"Sit," Maeve sniffed, pointing at a wooden chair by the scarred table. She was already rummaging through a cupboard, producing a green plastic first aid box that looked like it had been purchased sometime in the previous century.
Iona sat.
"Hand."
Iona held out her bleeding hand.
Maeve took it without ceremony and began cleaning the wound with antiseptic that stung badly enough to make Iona hiss through her teeth. "Don't be dramatic. It's not deep."
"Your sheep has very sharp teeth."
"Not my sheep."
"She was in your garden."
"She's in everyone's garden. She's escaped from Glinna's flock and refuses to go back. I've tried everything short of physically carrying her. And I wouldn’t want to do that. She bites."
"Yes," Iona said, looking at her hand. "I noticed."
The corner of Maeve's mouth twitched. It wasn't quite a smile, but it was close enough that Iona felt something loosen in her chest. This was still Maeve. Under the wariness and the fifteen years of silence, the same dry humor was lurking somewhere.
"Nice cottage," Iona offered, as Maeve wrapped a bandage around her hand with brisk efficiency.
"It's fine."
"Very… remote."
"That's the point."
"Hard to find."
"Again, that’s the point."
"The view is lovely."
"Iona." Maeve looked up, and there was something in her face that made Iona's rehearsed speech evaporate entirely. "You didn't come all the way to Scotland to compliment my view."
"No," Iona admitted. "I didn't."
Maeve finished with the bandage and released her hand. She put the first aid box away, closed the cupboard door, and leaned against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed over her chest. Her expression was unreadable again, closed off in a way that Iona remembered and had never liked.
"So," Maeve said. "Why are you here?"