Page 80 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
It’s about Ralph, not Auden, and there seems to be nothing special about it really. It was written for a local paper, and it’s an interview with him about maintaining a local village tradition at Lammastide. He mentions Estamond Guest as another Thornchapel owner who went to great pains to revive all the particular village customs, including Imbolc and Beltane. There’s a picture of him standing in front of the fountain in the walled garden, looking directly into the camera without a smile. Irritatingly, he looks handsome and mysterious without it, just as his son does today.
The article interesting, mostly because it could be confirmation of what Poe suspects, which is that Ralph and the other adults at the house that summer might have been doing the same rituals we are. But perhaps the most interesting part of the article is not what it’s about, but who wrote it.
My mother.
I decide to save the article to show to Poe, I pocket the rosary, and then I’m finished. I leave the Bible on the table, and I leave the bed as is in case there’s ever need for a spare room. Doubtful, since Thornchapel is basically all spare rooms, and who would come here when they could come to Thornchapel, but stranger things have happened. I also leave up the picture of Jesus by the bed—it’s that one picture where Jesus is staring out at you with a sort of really? REALLY? expression, like he’s just checked your data log of sins and is very disappointed. But I like the picture for all that because you can see Jesus’s heart in it, and it’s circled by thorns and crowned by fire, and I’ve always thought that if there was any kind of heart worth having, it would be that one.
I drag down the bags of clothes too old or worn to donate and pop them in the wheelie bin outside, and then pile the donation bags into my clapped-out shitheap of a car. And then I decide that the day’s work calls for day-beer. But by the time I search out a Hobgoblin and sit down in my mother’s office chair, I hear the front door open.
Startled and too raw for company, I jump up, thinking I’ll make excuses about going into work soon or something. But when I round the corner and actually see Auden standing there in slim gray trousers and a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up enough to show the strong lines of his forearms . . .
Well, my resolve leaves me pretty fast after that.
“Um, hi,” I say, taking a drink of my beer and trying to look absolutely, totally casual. Not like I want to throw myself on the floor and give him my unconditional sexual surrender. “It’s Tuesday.”
“So I’ve heard,” Auden replies. “Can you believe it really comes round once a week?”
His cool teasing means so much to me that my first instinct is to deflect with growly sulkiness so he can’t see how much I crave his attention. “Yeah, I meant more like, shouldn’t you be in London right now?”
A one-shouldered shrug. His shirt is so well-tailored that it pulls a little with the movement, displaying the flats and furrows of his stomach underneath, along with the swells of his shoulders and arms.
I should say something else sarcastic, but my mouth is busy tugging at my lip piercing.
“Rebecca’s people are going to start on the maze tomorrow, so I decided to take the week off. It feels like a big step.”
“Then shouldn’t you be there? Not here?”
Auden tilts his head. “Do you not want me here?”
I don’t answer, because I do, I do want him here, but somehow admitting that feels like a concession, and today isn’t the day.
“Hmm,” Auden says, taking a step forward. And then another step. He reaches for my beer and takes it out of my hands, raising it to his lips and taking a drink. I think I might be hypnotized by the working of his throat as he swallows, by the way his Adam’s apple bobs and moves. God. That fucking throat.
He hands the beer back to me, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he steps past me and looks into my mother’s office. “You know, I’ve never really seen your house? Both times I came here looking for you, your mother gave me tea in the front room, but I never got any farther.”
“There’s nothing to see,” I say, hating myself for how much I like his thoughts focused on me. “It’s just a house.”
Auden turns to me with eyebrows raised. “No house is just a house, Saint.”
“This one is.”
“Then why can’t I see it?”
Feeling trapped by my own argument somehow, I scowl.
“Fine. See it. I don’t care.”
Auden’s already turning to go up the stairs, and somehow I know in my bones that his search of my room is not going to be the same kind of quick little survey Poe gave it several weeks ago. No, he’s going to look. He’s going to see.
I almost go up after him. To do what, I don’t know—throw my body in front of my bedroom door maybe, or just flop on the floor and wrap my arms around his ankles. Beg him to stop this relentless seduction of me because I can’t bear the heat of his attention, I can’t bear knowing that he hasn’t called me mine again yet, I can’t bear anything about him or about us.
I stand at the foot of the stairs for a few moments, chewing on my lip, and then I make myself wheel back around to the office, where I sit in the chair with a decisive plop. I’m going to do what I planned on doing before Auden barged in, and that’s fucking that.
It’s very hard to concentrate though, with Auden just a floor away. Hearing the slow creak of his footsteps above me, and knowing he’s studying my life like I’m an exam he’s going to sit. Part of me craves it—all of it—I want him to scrawl an M over my heart once again—I want to crawl to him and cling on to him and bear every single brunt of his displeasure as Poe already gets to sometimes.
But another part of me wants to stay hidden forever. Being seen hurts. And what if he comes downstairs with a grave expression on his face, and it turns out that his investigation confirmed some horrible suspicions about me? Like I really am dull and uninteresting, I really am a coward? I’m still the same soul that took six steps away from him before I turned back?
I want to pull out my hair at the thought, but I settle for pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes until I see stars, and then I pull them back with a sharp, determined breath and dive into my mother’s things for real.
