Evie
Did you ever love her? Do you know?
Wessex’s voice is muddled through the buzzing in her ears. He doesn’t smell right, her mind cries nonsensically where she is bowed over Sam’s lax face. He smells like ink and vellum, not like this. Washed clean until there is simply nothing. Just as there is nothing now within the body Wessex holds in her arms. Evie manages to sway backwards into her shop, tears streaking silently down her cheeks as she lifts a trembling hand to direct Wessex to the back room where her cot stands empty. Her voice refuses to surface from behind the blockage suddenly in her throat, so instead the Evergreen focuses on the menial; closing the door, locking the handle, each step that’s counted from doorway to bedside as if the world has been shrunk to the smallest minutia of moments.
Murdered. Gods. The word hangs with her, a weight around her neck as she silently directs Wessex to lay Sam on the sheets. She’ll never be able to sleep there again, but he deserves better than the cold, wooden expanse of her work table.
And then the Evergreen folds helplessly to kneel beside him, laying her hand overtop the bookseller’s because she can’t bear to feel how stiff his fingers would be if she laced her own between them. Without taking her eyes off his face, she speaks, and the words come hollow and strange. “Tell me what happened.”
Murdered. Gods. The word hangs with her, a weight around her neck as she silently directs Wessex to lay Sam on the sheets. She’ll never be able to sleep there again, but he deserves better than the cold, wooden expanse of her work table.
And then the Evergreen folds helplessly to kneel beside him, laying her hand overtop the bookseller’s because she can’t bear to feel how stiff his fingers would be if she laced her own between them. Without taking her eyes off his face, she speaks, and the words come hollow and strange. “Tell me what happened.”
Or did you just never want to be alone?
