Page 11 of Rune’s Solace

“I know how to steep tea.”

There was just enough bite in it to make me look at her.

“I know you do.” I did know. I shouldered the bag. There were a hundred things between us, and standing beside a sleeping woman at the end of the worst two days of her life wasn’t the place for any of them. So I said the only thing left that was true and clean. “You should sleep too. You’ve been up with her two nights. It doesn’t help her any if you go down next.”

Amy looked at me then. Really looked, for the first time since I’d come in, and there was a lot in it, tired, pissed, cold, and something underneath all of it I recognized because I was the bastard who’d put it there.

“I’ll sleep when she’s alright,” she said. “That’s how it works. You show up for somebody, you stay.” A tiny beat. “But I guess that’s not really your area.”

It landed exactly where she aimed it. Girl knew where to stick the knife.

“No,” I said. “I guess it’s not.”

I didn’t defend it. There wasn’t any defending it that wouldn’t turn into telling her the truth, and the truth wasn’t a thing I could hand her over a sleeping woman at midnight and then walk out on. So I let her have the hit. I’d earned it and about a hundred more like it, and taking them was the closest thing to honest I had left where she was concerned.

I let myself out. Horse was in the hall, of course, planted against the far wall with his arms crossed, waiting like a man outside a surgery.

“She’s down,” I told him. “Amy’s got her. She’ll sleep the night.”

He nodded, and his shoulders came down an inch, and he didn’t say thank you because men like us don’t, but it was in there.

I started past him, got three steps down the hall and stopped long enough to look back. I’d always told myself the difference between me and Horse was that I’d done it clean. Made a decision, made it stick, spared her the long slow version. Told myself I was the smart one, the kind one, the one who loved her enough to cut it off quick.

Standing over Brenda I’d finally seen it clear. There wasn’t any clean version. There was just the woman left in the dark either way. Horse at least knew he’d fucked it up. I’d been dumb enough to think I’d done Amy a favor.

CHAPTER FIVE

LUCY DIDN’T KNOCK, because as far as I could tell Lucy had never knocked on anything in her life.

The door hit the wall hard enough to rattle the lamp, and there she was, tiny and furious and somehow managing to take up the doorway, one hand on her hip and a travel mug in the other that I was pretty sure was coffee in name only.

“Alright,” she announced, to the room, the compound, heck, they could probably hear her in town. “That is enough of this!”

I was in the chair by the window where I’d more or less lived for the better part of a week. Fiona had the edge of the bed, one hand resting on the blanket over Brenda’s hip, where she’d been most of the day and a good part of the days before it.

Brenda was like a mother to her. She was the one who’d raised Fiona after her mama died. Horse’s daughter, Bolt’s old lady, if anybody had the right to that bed, it was Fiona.

She’d sat there all week, just calm, close, and not going anywhere.

But I’d caught it a couple times when Brenda wasn’t looking. Something would change around Fiona’s eyes, like she was working really hard not to be angry. And she was angry. Really angry. She just kept it tucked away somewhere Brenda couldn’t see it.

It wasn’t at Brenda. And I didn’t think it was really at Tom, either. Whatever it was, Tom had just brought it back up. Like he’d reminded her of something she’d been trying not to think about for a really long time.

She never said what. I never asked.

I knew better than most that sometimes you didn’t want somebody asking.

Brenda was where Brenda had been, in the bed, on her side, facing the wall, the quilt up to her chin. She’d been eating again, a little. Sleeping, thanks to the tin on the nightstand. But she hadn’t gotten up, not really, not in the way that counted, and between us, Fiona and me, we’d spent days trying not to push her. Maybe not pushing was the problem.

Not pushing wasn’t Lucy’s problem.

“Lucy.” Brenda didn’t turn over. “I love you. Go away.”

“No.” Lucy walked straight to the window and hauled the curtains open so hard one of the hooks pinged off somewhere and the room lit up. Brenda made a sound like a vampire. “Nope. No more! Look at this. It’s two in the afternoon and it smells like a funeral home in here and you have got two pretty girls half your age sitting vigil like you’re on your way out. You’re not on your way out, Brenda. You got your heart broke. Welcome to being alive, it’s humiliating, everybody’s done it, get up!”

I put my hand over my mouth. It was that or laugh, and I wasn’t sure laughing was allowed yet.

“You don’t understand,” Brenda started.