Page 5 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
Not that it mattered either way. The police found no trace of her here at all, not even after they tramped out to the silent ruins of the chapel.
I’m not foolish enough to think I’ll find her here, or that I’ll find her at all . . . except, what if I could? Or at least, what if I could find out why?
My father has always worried over my reckless hopefulness, my stubborn optimism, and he’s gently encouraged me more than once to accept that she’s dead . . . or at the very least, the kind of missing that doesn’t want to be found. And it’s not like I expect to succeed in finding her when so many police officers and the private detectives hired by my father have failed, but turning off the hope simply isn’t possible, even after all these years.
Especially not after the convivificat.
Even if she wasn’t the one to send it, even if someone else found it and then decided to mail it to me—it’s still something. It’s still worth building a little fire of hope under.
Anyway, this isn’t how she would have seen the house on that last day, now that I think of it. She came on Halloween, when the trees would have been burning with autumn and the forest floor would have been carpeted with red and gold and orange. Leaves would have fluttered from the sky like rain, the climbing roses shedding ragged petals like tears.
No, she wouldn?
??t have seen Thornchapel like I’m seeing it now—bare and barren. She wouldn’t have seen it dead, only dying.
However, the house is actually anything but dead or dying—no matter how gloomy the bare rose canes and surrounding trees make it seem. This becomes very clear to me as we park, and I see several trucks and vans disgorging ladders and lumber and plastic pipes. Men in T-shirts, even in this cold, bustle in and out a side door with the industry of ants building an anthill.
“What a place,” the cab driver says, opening my door before I can open it myself. “You really staying here?”
“For now,” I answer as lightly as possible, secretly wondering what all this messy turmoil is. Auden’s lawyer didn’t mention anything about the house having work done—he only mentioned that I was welcome to live there while I worked for the Guest family. I accepted—it’s unusual, of course, but it will save money, and anyway, Thorncombe didn’t have any places available to rent. And if there had been a part of me that thought of Auden as I agreed, then I refused to admit it to myself at the time.
“Modernizing,” the driver says wisely as we circle back to the trunk to get my bags. “Lots of these old places need it. Ah, it’s warmed up enough to rain now.”
It has, just a few soft spits here and there. I glance back at the trucks, the dumpster at the side of the house with odd bits of wall and plumbing sticking out of it.
The Thornchapel I remember had been modern enough—at least outside of the medieval rooms and the silent Long Gallery. There was running water and electricity, and televisions and an Xbox in Auden’s room, so if there’d been hunter green carpet and floral wallpaper elsewhere, my ten-year-old self hadn’t noticed enough to care.
“I think the owner died,” I say in a tone of conversational speculation . . . though I know for a fact that Auden’s father is dead because the family lawyer told me as much. “It’s his son’s now. Maybe he wants to put his mark on it?”
“Fixing it up to sell, more like.” The trunk slams down and the cab driver rolls both suitcases closer to me. “These places are damned hard to maintain.”
Funny how that’s never occurred to me, that Thornchapel needs maintenance, that it needs roof repairs and masonry replacements and plumbing fixes and window sashes refitted. It’s always seemed like a place apart to me, a place alive, like a temple in a myth or a castle in a fairy tale. It just is, it just exists outside any human intervention, a rambling stone sentinel surrounded by trees at the front and sumptuous gardens at the back. Even now, watching workers carry in supplies and hearing the faint but distinct noises of power tools and hammering, it’s hard to believe this place is just a house and not the gorgeous, ancient gate to a mysterious chapel I only half remember.
I tip the driver extra for helping with my bags—and also for braving the hair-raising country roads—and after a quick cheers, he gives me a creased business card from his coat pocket with the cab company number on it.
“In case this place don’t work for you,” he says, giving me a small smile and then giving the house a doubtful look. Through his eyes, I can see how strange this all is. A chipper American girl about to live in a house that’s not hers for a job she only accepted ten days ago. He can’t know I’ve been dreaming of this place every night since I left, that in my mind this is the place that swallowed my mother whole. He can’t know that I’ve spent almost every day of my life since she left trying to find a way back here.
“That’s very kind,” I say with an answering smile, which seems to reassure him. He gets in the car and leaves as I try to shove my wallet and things into my backpack, and after the car is swallowed by the trees and hedges on the way out, I pull out my phone and use the camera to make sure I don’t have mascara smeared on my face or anything. I took a flight from Kansas City to Minneapolis, from Minneapolis to London, then I took a train to Newton Abbot and battled carsickness for nearly an hour on the twisting roads—and all of that sitting on a welted ass because I couldn’t bear to face Thornchapel without one last kink scene with my ex-girlfriend.
I haven’t properly slept in thirty-three hours, nor have I washed or changed my clothes, and the last thing I ate was a lukewarm sausage roll washed down with black coffee. I feel stale and strung-out, and I can’t even imagine how I look. Certainly not fit to meet Mr. Cremer, the Guest family’s lawyer.
The front camera on my phone is never flattering, but it’s worse than usual today. My hair—dark, dark brown and falling past my breasts—needs a brush, and there is indeed mascara under my eyes from napping against my wadded-up cardigan. My complexion, which is the kind of translucent ivory-pink that shows every mark, bruise, and blush, betrays my exhaustion with bluish smudges under my eyes and cheeks splotchy from intermittent napping and the nipping wind. A glance down at my wrinkled dress confirms there’s no part of me that looks professional.
I run a hand down the back of my thigh and suck in a breath as each welt and bruise sings a little song to me.
I’m awake and alive, those songs remind me. I’m awake and everything is possible.
Maybe I can slip in unnoticed and find a place to change.
If I recall correctly, there was a bathroom off the main hallway on the ground floor, and if I went in through the same door all the workers are using . . .
Mind made up, I slip my phone into my coat pocket, take hold of my suitcase handles, and start wheeling them through the side door—where I nearly run right into the firm chest of one of the workers.
His hands fly to my shoulders in an instinctive gesture to steady me, and the automatic apology spills out of my mouth before I even fully realize what’s just happened. As a chronic daydreamer, I’m used to running into people . . . and doorways and light poles and walls . . . and so the hurried sorry! that spills out of me is one I’ve been practicing my entire life.
“No, no, it was my fault,” the worker says in an accent that’s almost American, and I glance up at him, surprised at the sudden pang of homesickness I feel hearing it. Especially because it’s only been a day and a half since I left home.
He looks down at me with ink-black eyes. Longish sable hair frames his angular face, and dark eyebrows, long eyelashes, and high cheekbones give way to a stubbled jaw and an oh-so-slightly cleft chin. And when his mouth parts again, I catch the glint of a silver bead on his lower lip. A barbell. It pierces the middle of his lip, emphasizing the softness of his mouth, the lush but firm lines of it.
