A Lesson in Thorns

by Sierra Simone

  “Proserpina,” he says warmly. “You must be tired after your trip.”

  “Yes,” I say, heroically fighting back another yawn. “And you can call me Poe.”

  “Poe,” St. Sebastian repeats, as if to himself. As if to memorize it.

  Auden’s smile grows lazier and maybe more dangerous, even as he pointedly ignores St. Sebastian. “Poe then,” he says, his eyes never leaving my face. “I’m surprised you recognized me.”

  There’s no point in completely lying, because nothing matters with Auden and nothing ever will. So I settle for part of the truth. “I looked you up on Instagram before I came here,” I inform him.

  He makes a face. “Oh, that thing. I’m a little embarrassed.”

  “You shouldn’t be,” I say, and I mean it. It’s the kind of sparsely updated account that speaks to a mostly unself-conscious life. A handful of selfies from his days at Cambridge, a few pictures of him with his rowing team. A picture of him smiling in his undergraduate graduation robes with his family and then a picture of a German shepherd puppy named Sir James Frazer. It hasn’t been updated in the last year and a half, unlike Delphine’s, which is updated almost daily—to say nothing of her stories.

  And okay, yes, I looked at everyone’s social media before I got on the plane, everyone except for St. Sebastian Martinez, who doesn’t have a single social media account, who barely exists at all, according to the internet.

  There was Auden of course, with his indifferent profiles displaying the slenderest peek of his charmed, rich-boy life, and then there was Becket Hess—or rather Father Becket Hess—who’d only just been ordained last year and been sent here to Dartmoor to shepherd an idyllic little parish. Then there was Rebecca Quartey, with her impeccably professional account showcasing her work in the last year as a landscape architect, and Delphine Dansey, who as far as I could tell didn’t have a job, or if she did, it was simply to be pretty and happy in lots of different pretty and happy locations.

  “Trust the librarian to do her research before she came,” Auden says.

  “I am a bit surprised to see you, though—Mr. Cremer made it sound as if he’d be the one to greet me . . . ?”

  “Oh that,” Auden says, waving a hand. “I was here anyway, and besides, I was looking forward to meeting you again after all this time.” He takes a step forward, and for a moment, I think he’s reaching for me—maybe for my hand or to pull me into a hug—but he’s only reaching for one of my suitcase handles. “Let’s get you settled then, and show you around the place—”

  “Oh, there you are!” comes a voice, and all three of us turn to see a beautiful, plus-sized blond woman and a tall sandy-haired man, both white, coming toward us.

  Delphine and Father Becket—Delphine in a blouse, knee-length skirt and tights, and Father Becket in his priest collar—reach us in an explosion of chatter and greetings, and suddenly I’m pulled into hugs and given kisses, and then another voice comes from the far end of the hallway, and a slender black woman with braids coiled in a crown and an iPad tucked under her arm joins us too.

  Rebecca.

  And just like that, we’re all together again, all six of us, and there’s more hugging and exclaiming, except I still don’t hug Auden and he still doesn’t try, and St. Sebastian stands apart from it all, hovering in the doorway like a vampire cursed not to come inside.

  I look at them all for a minute as they talk at me and then talk at each other and then argue about who’s talking too much. How strange to think that we’d all been children together—for a summer at least—that we’d seen each other cry and fall out of trees and shout and laugh. Looking at them now is dizzying—like I’m seeing the past and the present at the same time.

  “I can’t believe you were just sneaking in without telling us,” Rebecca says, giving me another warm squeeze, while Becket asks when I arrived.

  “Oh, just now,” I answer. “The cab just left.”

  “Auden, why didn’t you send the car for her?” Delphine chides. “A cab for a friend, now really!”

  “Well, Cremer offered the car, but she declined.”

  “We could have gotten her too, you know—”

  “She probably wanted to nap,” Rebecca tells Delphine. “Or work, and she wouldn’t have been able to do either with you talking at her face for an hour.”

  “She’s a librarian, she can’t work in the car. What is she going to do, shelve books in the back seat?”

  “All right, all right,” Auden hushes them. “Poe is probably dying to rest for a minute—”

  “Poe?” Delphine demands. “What kind of name is that?”

  “What kind of name is Delphine?” Rebecca counters, and Delphine scowls.

  “I like it,” Becket tells me in a warm voice. “It suits you. Very literary.”

  “And easier to spell,” I explain, which earns me a little laugh. I relax the tiniest bit, which makes me realize how nervous I was to be around them, how nervous I still am. They seem so glamorous right now, even chattering and squabbling in a muddy hallway. They seem so seductive and so chosen, like a little club, a little society of the five of them.

  No, not five, I think, taking in the scene with fresh eyes. Four.

  St. Sebastian is not part of the group.

  It’s not only his T-shirt and jeans compared with the careless sophistication of everyone else, but it’s also the way he’s standing with boots planted and arms crossed, almost as if he’s waiting for someone to tell him to leave. My chest pinches at that, both in sympathy and empathy.

  I feel apart too. Young and poor and cheaply dressed. And indecently fascinated with the interesting people in front of me.

  I turn to say something to St. Sebastian—I’m not sure what, but I don’t like this weird fault line running through the hallway, this fault line I don’t understand—and that’s when I catch Auden looking at me and St. Sebastian.

  No, not looking . . . devouring.

  A high flush dusts his cheeks, and his wide, boyish mouth is set in the same hungry, tortured line it was twelve years ago, right before he pulled us into a searing wedding kiss. His hands flex at his sides, as if they’re itching at the memory of pulling us close. As if they ache to make us ache.

  My blood is flooded with something hot, something urgent, and I hear St. Sebastian inhale.

  Auden’s eyes close ever so briefly as he lets out a breath, like he’s searching for control, and when he opens them again, he’s back to how he was. Indifferent and the tiniest bit scornful.

  You are not going to be stupid. Spoiled rich boy, remember?

  No one seems to notice what’s happening between the three of us. Becket, Rebecca, and Delphine are still talking over one another, and anyway, the moment is so short that I think it’s only lasted a handful of breaths. Then St. Sebastian is back to scowling and Auden is back to that crooked smile, and I’m grabbing for my suitcases and making excuses about needing to change.

  “Yes, yes, really,” Auden says in exasperation to the others, “there’s going to be plenty of time to catch up later; you’re making me out to be a terrible host.” He does a very good job of not looking at St. Sebastian as he takes a suitcase handle and shoulders a bag for me.

  I turn again to St. Sebastian, knowing I should say goodbye . . . and what? That I want to see him again? That I’d like to grab coffee? As soon as I think it, I feel flushed and girlish. It would be easier if St. Sebastian weren’t so himself, maybe, if he weren’t exactly the kind of person I’ve always been attracted to. Broody and pierced and a little angry. The diametric opposite to my dreamy tweediness.

  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.

  “But then,” he continues, “I just couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I don’t know why. I still don’t.”

  He gives me a helpless kind of smile, as if I’d blame him for not destroying his ancient family home.

  “I suppose you know I just finished my master’s in architecture?” he asks.

  I make a vague nod, not wanting to admit exactly how Drunk Librarian I’d gone on him before I came here.

  “Well, I’d just taken a job with a firm, and I had the idea—why not hire myself? Why not get my practical experience working on someplace that belongs to me? My boss agreed so long as I keep up my work on my other projects, and so now I’m here.” He waves a careless hand. “Playing architect to a place I might still hate.”

  “Might?”

  More helpless smiling. “I guess I’m hoping I’ll figure it out by the end.”

  “And the others?” I ask.

  “Will they figure it out—Oh! Why are they here, you mean. Well, Rebecca is a couple years older, I think you remember, and our resident genius. She’s already got a global reputation as a landscape architect.”

  “You’re going to redesign the gardens,” I realize.

  “Rebecca is going to redesign the gardens,” Auden clarifies, “and I don’t really care what she does to them. Whatever it is, it’ll be good because she’s good, and it will be different. It won’t be the same as it was when, well . . . you know.”

  “As that summer?”

  He nods.

  I chew on my lip. The thought of the cloistered English gardens being demolished, with their tousled riots of flowers and statues of veiled women and hidden benches . . . the thought of the maze being demolished . . .

  My head snaps back up. “You’re not going to do anything with the thorn chapel, are you?”

  “It’s not scheduled or anything, so I could,” Auden says, with a strange note to his voice, like he himself has just realized he’s committing some kind of blasphemy. “But I don’t know yet. I don’t have any plans to at the moment.”

  Relief seeps through me. “And then Delphine? Why is she here too?”

  “Well, we’re engaged,” he murmurs. “So it just seemed natural she’d come live with me.”

  The relief stops; all other feelings stop. I’m suddenly very, very still. And numb.

  “Pardon?” I ask.

  “We’re engaged to be married,” he repeats, slightly louder, as if he thinks I asked pardon because I didn’t hear him. “I proposed last year.”

  “Oh,” I say. My voice sounds dull, and I try to brighten it. “I didn’t know.”

  “We haven’t formally announced it; you know, in the papers or anything like that. My father didn’t approve, and then after he died, Delphine wanted to wait until it was more . . . seemly, I suppose. Only her parents and our close friends know; she hasn’t even posted about it online, I don’t think.”

  I know she hasn’t posted about it online b
ecause she’d also been a victim of my Drunk Librarian research.

  “Congratulations,” I say, with a fake-jolly expression that makes me wince, but Auden doesn’t see because he’s turned back to the trees.

  “Yes,” he says to the glass.

  Yes.

  Not thank you, not any expression of excitement or endearments of his future bride. It’s strange, but I take less notice of it than I should because I’m still fighting against that awful numb feeling.

  Auden and Delphine.

  Engaged.

  It makes a terrible kind of sense—of all of us, their worlds are the closest aligned, and even downstairs they looked like a matched set—her with her Peter Pan-collared blouse and skirt, him in his trousers and clinging sweater—offhandedly rich without being flashy about it.

  I have to change the subject, and I cast around desperately for something, anything, that will move the conversation away from the idea of Auden and Delphine getting married.

  “And St. Sebastian?” I ask quickly. “Is he staying here? I saw him working . . .”

  “He moonlights for the local building team I hired,” Auden says tightly. “He is not living here.”

  I wonder what possible reason he could have to be so hostile about St. Sebastian. “Oh.”

  “I think he’s still living in his mother’s old house in Thorncombe,” Auden says after a mutual pause.

  “Her old house? Did she move?”

  “She died.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yes. Seems to be a theme with us.” Auden’s voice is flat, and he’s still looking out the window, his hands in his pockets.

  I don’t know what to say next; my brain is completely wrung dry from the travel and the time change and seeing everyone and I just can’t think.

  I need a nap, I think with the fervor of an addict. Just a small one.

  Luckily, I’m saved from having to speak by the cheerful clicking of paws on the hallway floor outside, and then by the appearance of a very handsome dog who noses a snout into the crack of the door and then pushes his body inside.