Page 8 of A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel 1)
But St. Sebastian is already backing outside, one fist against the doorway as if he needed to hit something or someone, and then he’s fully turned and disappearing into a fresh spate of winter drizzle.
It’s the exhaustion and adrenaline of travel that makes my stomach twist so hard at him leaving without a word, I’m sure of it. He’ll be around the house, and I’ll find him, and we’ll talk and i
t will be . . . fine. Probably.
With a smile I summon up from somewhere, I swivel away from the sight of St. Sebastian vanishing into the rain. I take my other suitcase in hand and gesture to Auden. “Ready when you are.”
My room is winsomely old.
A few large rugs are scattered over wide wood planks, and there’s a canopied bed piled thick with blankets and snowy pillows. A small stone fireplace has a wood-burning stove fitted in, and there’s a low bench before a row of arched, mullioned windows. A small desk, large dresser, and end table complete the furnishings, along with two small tapestries covering the stone and plaster walls.
“I’m sorry it’s so primitive,” Auden apologizes as we wheel my things in. We’re alone for the moment—the others having bustled off to get tea ready for me—and it feels quiet. Too quiet.
“I don’t think I stayed here last time,” I say, looking around. “I must have stayed in a different room.”
“You would have stayed in the south wing, I’m sure. It’s the most ‘modern,’ although modern is a very generous use of the word. It’s what’s currently being renovated and extended. But this wing will have its turn too, and in a few months, we’ll all have to decamp to the new section.”
“‘We’ll all’—so everyone is really staying here?”
“Just like old times, right?” Auden says, moving my suitcase against a wall and carefully setting my bag beside it.
“Just like old times,” I echo. It’s what I’ve wanted for so long—and thought myself ridiculous for wanting. Who wants to see the people from their childhood so badly? Like really?
“Becket doesn’t live here, obviously,” Auden says, wandering over to the window. “His church is in Bellever. But he comes here quite a bit since I came back.”
“When was that?” I ask, curious. “When you came back, I mean?”
I wonder if he’s felt the same pull to Thornchapel I have, if he even could, since I suspect part of my fascination with the place stems from its distance from my life, its inaccessibility. It would always be a mystery to me, this hovering dream just out of waking reach. But I wasn’t a Guest, I wasn’t tied to the place as Auden was. It wasn’t mine.
“After I buried my father in the St. Brigid’s graveyard,” Auden says after a minute, his eyes on the rain-soaked forest outside the windows.
Well, shit. I feel idiotic for not having thought of that, especially after I’d only just talked to the cab driver about it. I make a pointless gesture with my hands—not that he can see it, since he’s still looking outside. “I’m sorry about your father.”
“I’m not,” he bites off.
“Oh.”
He scrubs his hands through his hair and blows out a breath. “I’m sorry. That was churlish of me, especially given what happened to your mother. What I should say is that we had a complicated relationship and none of that complication was resolved at the time of his death.”
“But your own mother . . .” I say, then stop, wishing I could take it back. It’s another consequence of my half-dreaming brain. Sometimes the words escape me before I can think them through.
“She drank herself to death,” Auden says, finally turning to face me. “If you were wondering.”
She drank herself to death. My father had told me when she’d died a few years ago, but I hadn’t known . . . I’d only known that Auden’s father had written to my father, and that when my father read the letter, he’d been angrier than I’d ever seen him. He’d burned the letter and gotten drunk and told me I was never, ever allowed to return to Thornchapel, not as an adult, not as an old woman, not ever.
“Anyway,” Auden says. “My father dying only meant I was an orphan in truth rather than in spirit. A mere formality.”
“Oh Auden,” I say, because I can’t help it, because it’s what I would say to anyone. No matter how handsome and sad and angry they look framed by a medieval window.
He sighs and I see him reaching for his mask again, the one that makes it so easy for me not to fall in love with him. “At any rate, we were talking about my little house party. After he died, I felt like I needed to . . . I don’t know, erase all my memories of him, I guess. I sold off the townhouse, donated all his things. I thought I’d find a way to blot out Thornchapel too because I hate this place, I hate it so much, but when I walked in the front door, I—”
Auden breaks off, as if he isn’t sure what he was or what he felt. He blinks at me for a moment, as if I’ll have the answer.
I don’t, but strangely, I wish I did. Or maybe I just wish I knew the question better.
“Well, regardless,” he says, shaking off whatever thoughts he’d been having, “I began to think maybe I couldn’t sell it. Maybe I should tear it down. Burn it and salt the earth where it stood.”
His voice is just a touch too wry, a bit too self-deprecating, for it to be hyperbole, which means he’s telling the truth. He really did want to burn Thornchapel to the ground. It’s almost like hearing blasphemy, and I’m surprised at how horrified the thought makes me.
