Page 75 of Holly & Hemlock
I squeeze his hand, once, then let go. He picks up the bag, shrugs into his coat, and lingers for a moment with his fingers on the brass doorknob. The finality of it is enormous, more than I’d expected.
He looks around the foyer—the arch of the staircase, the battered umbrella stand, the ancient runner rug that always snags at the same spot. His eyes are wet, but his face does not break.
“You’ll take care of the house?” he says, and it is less a question than a benediction.
“Someone has to,” I answer. I watch the way his shoulders drop, how the burden passes from him to me in a single inhalation.
There is nothing left to say. Larkin opens the door, steps into the blue-white dawn, and is gone. I watch his back as he walks down the steps and dissolve into the field of frost and sunlight. I wonder if the world outside will accept him any more kindly than the one in here.
The silence afterward is a wound. The air fills the shape of him, then contracts, and the only thing left is my own reflection in the glass, washed out by the day.
I close the door. I lean against it, for longer than I mean to.
A moment later, Lane appears at the landing, barefoot and bare-armed despite the chill. He’s a black mark against the sun, massive and unblinking, looking as if he has been waiting there all night for just this cue.
His eyes are fixed on the door, not on me; the line of his jaw is so rigid I half-expect it to splinter.
I hear the car door slam, the faint echo of it traveling up the drive and through the bones of the house. Lane comes down the steps in long strides, shoulders hunched as if bracing for an impact that never arrives.
He pauses at the foot of the stairs, close enough that I can smell the woodsmoke still clinging to his skin from the fire hours before.
“You could have said goodbye,” I say, too softly to be accusation.
Lane shakes his head, one hand gripping the newel post, the other tucked into his waistband. “Would’ve made it worse.” His voice is morning-rough, the words glazed with sleep or grief, I can’t tell.
I walk to the door, stand with my hand on the knob but then pause. I hear something, and move to the window to look.
Outside, Larkin is fussing with the engine. He opens the hood, curses once, slams it shut, then leans against the side of the car with his head bowed. For a long moment, he doesn’t move.
Lane steps up behind me. He’s close enough that I feel the rumble of his breathing in my back, a low and persistent percussion. “Should I—” he starts, but does not finish.
I open the door. The air that hits is knife-cold, flooding my robe and crystallizing the sweat at my neck. Lane stands in the threshold, one hand braced against the jamb, his silhouette looming over mine.
I watch as Larkin straightens, sees us, and for the first time ever, I think he doesn’t know what he is supposed to do.
“The one time the house lets me leave, the car does me in.”
He comes up the porch steps, the snow squeaking under his shoes. Lane passes him, ignoring him completely, to go examine the car. He opens the hood again, fiddling with things I can’t see and don’t know about anyway.
Larkin and I watch, silent. There’s nothing left to say.
A few minutes later, Lane returns to us on the porch.
“Should be good to go now.”
Larkin extends a hand, which is so unlike him that it nearly breaks me. Lane looks at the hand, then at Larkin’s face, and then pulls him into a hug so sudden it jars the breath out of both of them.
Larkin tenses at first, then sags into it, his arms winding around Lane’s back with the practiced ease of someone who has wanted this for a long time and denied it even longer.
They do not speak. They do not need to. The wind swirls snowflakes around them, filling the open space with a hush that feels religious. Tears prick my eyes and escape, leaving thin streams on my cheeks.
After a minute, Lane lets go, but not entirely—he holds Larkin by the shoulders, studies his face like he’s memorizing it for a time when it will be gone, or changed beyond recognition.
“Don’t fuck it up,” Lane says, the words a benediction.
Larkin laughs, shaky and small. “I’ll do my best.”
Then, in a deep voice clouded with emotion, he says, “Come back to us.”
