Chapter 24
The vacation cottage is carpeted in dust. Every corner hosts dried-up insects strung wall to wall by thoughtful spiders.
James’s flashlight swings onto a tattered couch facing a brick fireplace and a slanted bookshelf.
In the adjoining room, there is a gas stove, an empty refrigerator, and a stained coffeepot.
The first bedroom was, without a doubt, Wallace and his brother Sam’s.
Two twin beds, a shelf sagging with books, and an oak desk.
A wooden castle and a collection of untidy toys are half hidden beneath one of the unmade beds.
James feels a pang, imagining Midi ripped from his life in some violent, sudden way. He would never touch her room again.
After they probe the house, James sits on the sofa, years of cigarette smoke wafting out of the cushions.
Nelle has been quiet since they got in Penelope’s car, steeped in concentration.
She weaves in and out of the cottage’s rooms, opening cabinets, rummaging through drawers.
James doesn’t know what she is trying to find, and he is starting to doubt that even she knows.
But she must have learned something important about this place from the books in Penelope’s house.
Something Penelope must know, too. He drums his fingers together, perturbed to be out of the loop.
“Aha!” Nelle rings out from the room with the twin beds.
James jumps up and barrels in, only to find her sitting on the floor, prying at the boards with her fingertips, sweating as she pulls to no avail.
He drops beside her. “What did the floor do to offend you?”
“It’s hollow.” She grits her teeth. “Help me get it open.”
James digs in the gap between boards, but his fingers are bigger than Nelle’s, so the attempt is futile.
He sighs. “Still got that letter opener?”
She passes it, polished wood handle out, from her jacket pocket. He presses the blade between the floorboards. Breaking a sweat himself, he jiggles the board free and wrenches it up, victorious.
In the hollow underneath sit stacks upon stacks of paper.
Nelle reaches in and withdraws the top sheet. The paper is bluish in the moonlight, and she squints to read it. James shines his flashlight over her shoulder.
“This is Quill’s handwriting,” she says.
“Twenty-first of September. Today, I will eat breakfast at nine o’clock, work on my novel on the porch until two o’clock, eat lunch in the kitchen with my mother, then read in my bedroom until five o’clock, when I will eat dinner with my family in the kitchen, and then I will read again in my room, and then go to sleep at nine o’clock. I will wake at eight tomorrow.”
“He kept daily logs?” James peers into the floor cavity. From what he can see, the papers all record daily itineraries, handwritten in lists. I will do this at this time, then this at this time, then this at this time. Over and over and over again, endless lines of instruction.
“No, no, this is more than that.” Nelle’s holding two pages, crinkled between her fingers. “Quill was like me.”
James shakes his head, unsure what she means.
“He was created like me.” She points at the papers. “Look at all of these. Quill created me. Quill’s mother, Lily, created him. Penelope’s late husband, Samford, created Lily. Do you know what this means?”
“What?” James asks, trying to wrap his mind around the succession of writers.
Did that make Nelle any more or less human?
He shakes the thought away. Just his anxiety talking.
She has proven to him—though she never had to—how much she can feel the weight of sadness, and stress, and fear, and guilt, and hope.
However she became human doesn’t matter because she is.
“I can write for myself.” A grin splits Nelle’s face.
Her body seems ready to spring open. “I don’t need you to do it anymore, I can do it myself.
I found Lily’s old journals. She wrote poems to dictate her life.
It’s why everyone thought she was crazy, you see?
All her mystic statements and rhymes, her distant stares, the irregular pauses Quill wrote about in his short stories.
She was a poem, through and through. Quill wrote basic, daily instructions for himself, like he did for me.
But I’m made of fucking ink, dammit, I can write my own story. ”
The papers drift from her hands.
James offers up the journal and pen, but Nelle has already peeled a splinter from the old floorboard to prick her finger. A bead of ink settles at the tip. She brings it to the floor and writes: I run into the lake.
She shoots James a raw smile.
Then she takes off through the cottage and out the back door, across the stone patio, and into the night, howling like a wolf.
Once again, he is drawn to her like the tide to the moon.
When he emerges from the back door, Nelle is already halfway down the hill, her clothes strewn among the weeds. The pale curve of her back flashes before she crashes into the surface of the loch, then twists and slips backward, disappearing under bubbles and murk.
Like a lost cub chasing after his pack, James runs down the hill, kicking off his shoes, pulling off his socks, shimmying out of his clothes until he is naked and free and gaining momentum, the wind hitting his balls like ice—
He cannonballs into the water and plummets to the reedy floor. Freezing, electrified, rippling skin. A gong rung. His body undulates with feeling and sound.
It’s September, and he’s skinny-dipping in a small Scottish loch—what is life?
He kicks off the muddy bottom, breaks the surface, and slings water from his face. The cold racks his body with shivers. So far from the city, stars glitter like cinnamon on the water.
Nelle splashes at him. A freezing blast, startling him from his reverie.
He chases after her, but she paddles back toward the shore, a sea creature stroking on her back, exposing her breasts. Each sliver of skin James glimpses sends his blood rushing southward. Memories of the other night flash through his mind, fueling his desire.
Nelle walks to ankle-deep water, naked amid the reeds. She lifts her arms to wring out her hair, exposing the side of her breast, the outline of a pointed nipple, her back dimples.
James swears and averts his gaze to the cluster of gnats under the alder tree, whose branches twist over the water.
Out of his periphery, he sees Nelle staring at him.
“Look at me,” she says. Commands.
All he needed was permission.
“James,” she says, softly. An invitation. A plea.
For a few seconds, he studies her. Committing this to memory. Collarbone shadows, her nipples tight, her soft stomach curving into a V toward her thighs. He wants to feel every inch of her, first with his hands, then his tongue. Or vice versa.
He walks out of the waist-deep water, taking pleasure in her eyes roving down his chest. Lingering with the same magnetism he feels, the silvery force bouncing off their bodies, drawing them closer.
Nelle steps forward, rises on her toes, and kisses him. Her cold breasts brush his chest, her skin dripping.
Mouth to mouth, she says, “Bite my lip. I’ll heal quick.”
He hesitates but kisses her again, skimming his teeth on her bottom lip.
“Harder, you baby.”
Ever so slightly James bites down, drawing blood, the ink bitter on his tongue.
Nelle reaches up to touch the wound. He is sure he hurt her, but instead of crying out, she takes her ink-covered fingertip and traces it across his chest. Halfway through, she taps her lip again, reopening the cut.
When she finishes writing, she steps back to admire her work.
Nelle makes love to James is scrawled in a sloppy line beneath his collarbone.
“Ignore the handwriting,” she says. “Haven’t had much practice.”
“Are you sure about this?” he asks. “What if it’s not the right—”
Nelle grabs his jaw and kisses him. “Fuck the right moment, James.”
She pulls him uphill, only he must be heavier than she expected because her feet start sliding on the grass. Laughter bursts out as James wraps his arms around her waist, wheezing in camaraderie.
Back in the cottage, their footprints tracking wet grass across the floor, James lifts her up. Her legs lock around him, wet skin to skin, as he walks them into the master bedroom and lays Nelle on the bed. She stares up at him, brown eyes like opals in the shadows.
His lips brush the nook behind her jaw. “I’ve wanted you for so long.”
He trails down her collarbone while he awaits her response, his tongue grazing the curve of her breast, and she lets out a ticklish gasp. She is cold and wet. A dessert he can’t get enough of but wants to savor.
“How long?” She lifts her neck.
“Since New York.” He kisses where she wants, right behind her ear. “Since the rooftop.”
His mouth slides to the shadow of her navel, farther, featherlight brushes down the slope of her pelvis. He holds her waist with one hand, her breast with the other, as his tongue finds her center, flickering over flesh.
“Holy shit.” Nelle’s back arches, her fingers curling into the bedsheets.
“How long have you wanted me?” James’s hands tighten on her thighs, lifting her.
“Since the night I fell in love with you.” Her nails dig ten indentions into his scalp, and she tilts back into the pillows.
James wants her so bad, he can’t stand it, a coil so tightly wound inside him, he is worried it will unravel prematurely. He didn’t know it was possible to love someone with such conviction.
“What night was that?” he asks as her fingers curl through his hair. Touch me more.
“The night of the house fire,” she whispers. “The night we ran off together.”
He loses himself in the taste of her and nearly comes himself when she does, thighs like an iron vise around his head. She shudders, digs her heels into the mattress. Breathless, James wipes his mouth.
Without warning, Nelle grabs the back of his neck and pulls him up, eye to eye. Her lips are lake water and salt and ink, her tongue like a live wire.