Page 13 of Holly & Hemlock
4
The Storm and the Door
The storm arrives on the hour, punctual as a train. Or Mrs. Whitby’s daily diary. Dinner was uneventful, as Larkin had apparently been struck by a headache.
By dawn, the gardens are erased under a drift of new snow, and the house groans with the strain of wind against its bones. I watch from the Blue Room window, hands wrapped around a cup of black coffee, the surface rippling with each shudder of the pane. The snow is relentless, falling in sheets, fencing the manor off from the rest of the world.
Breakfast is a solitary affair. A tray appears at my door. Coffee, toast, marmalade, and a pair of soft-boiled eggs in cups lined up like soldiers on a plate. I eat in silence, reading the letter from the lawyer again, tracing my aunt’s name as if it might change in the daylight.
I decide to walk the perimeter, to take stock of the land that has, for better or worse, become mine. The boots I wear are not made for deep snow, but the crunch underfoot is solid and satisfying. The world is muffled, transformed into a tunnel of white and gray, the lines of the hedges and trellises just visible beneath the crust. I follow the path from yesterday,wondering if Lane has things to do outside when it snows or if he hibernates like a big bear.
I don’t have to wonder for long. I find him at the gate to the orchard, clearing ice from the hinges with a short-handled axe. He’s wearing a wool hat now, ears flattened beneath the knit, and a pair of gloves with the fingertips cut away. He doesn’t look up until I’m practically beside him.
“You’ll freeze out here,” he says, not unkindly.
I shrug. “I wanted to see the snow before it gets worse. I’m surprised you’re out here working, though I suppose I shouldn’t be.”
He sets the axe aside, leans against the gate post. The stance is defensive, but there’s a restlessness in him, an energy that seems barely contained by the layers of wool and canvas.
“You get the house, you get the headaches too,” he says. “No one tells you that.”
I smile, brittle. “They told me about the money, not the weather.”
He huffs. “Money never lasts. The cold always does.”
I gesture at the orchard, its rows of trees black and skeletal against the snow. “You manage all this yourself?”
He considers, then nods. “Mostly. Some of the staff help with harvest, and I usually get a helper for the grounds in the summer, but the rest of the year, it’s me.”
I look at his hands—huge, battered, surprisingly gentle as he brushes snow from the latch. “You like it?”
He hesitates, then glances at me sidelong. “I don’t need to like it. It needs doing.”
The wind picks up, funneling between the trees and making the orchard whistle. Lane folds his arms, chin sunk into his collar.
“What do you think of it so far?” he asks.
I don’t answer right away. The honest answer is that I haven’t decided what I think. There’s too much here. Too much opulence. Too much decay.
Too much strangeness.
“It’s dark. But in a beautiful way,” I say. “I don’t know what I’d do with it.”
He stares at me, eyes narrowed against the wind. “Everyone thinks they’re here to own the place. But no one ever does. Not really. It’s the other way around.”
There’s an edge to the words, a bitterness that doesn’t quite fit with the rest of him.
“It’s just a house,” I say, though I know already that it’s not.
Lane smiles, but it’s more like a wince. “Sure. You keep telling yourself that.”
We stand together at the threshold, not moving. The snow swirls around us, landing on his beard and melting instantly. I realize I’ve never been this close to him before, close enough to feel the heat coming off his body, the electricity of proximity. He’s taller than I remembered, his shoulders wide enough to block out the sun, if there were any left.
“Storm’ll last a week, maybe more,” he says. “Roads get buried out here. Sometimes takes days before they plow it out.”
I swallow, thinking of the long driveway, the isolation. “That sounds like a warning.”
He shakes his head, slow. “Just telling you. Some people, they get stuck out here, things go bad. Place has a way of getting in your head.”
