Page 46

There was a lot to take care of after a death.

Madeleine knew that all too well, but it took on an extra dimension when you had to do it in another country.

Not that she had to do it—she’d only known Jonathan for a short time.

But Haera was in no shape to learn the logistics right now, and Madeleine was good at keeping track of details and organizing.

She had help, too, and not just from Connor, Jim, and Isla.

Islanders came out of the woodwork once word got out.

There was old Annie, who owned a crafts shop that bought ?tlaquoy’s wool for practically nothing; Iona and Elliot, who owned the Kestrel and remembered the days when Jonathan was a regular; and Robert, who said Jonathan used to work with his father at the dairy that ?tlaquoy had once been.

All of them sent cards and condolences, offered to run errands, and so on.

Haera and Madeleine even received a surprise delivery of sausage rolls and pastries from the Sunrise Café.

Neither Arjun nor Jeremy accompanied it, but the note said: We’re sorry for your loss.

Come by any time. - A once, Madeleine caught her sitting on the sofa, crying softly with his fiddle in her lap.

At night, Madeleine held her close and woke her from bad dreams. Haera refused to discuss them but always pressed closer to Madeleine in their wake.

The funeral happened two weeks after Jonathan’s death.

Madeleine had found a will in one of his desk drawers, drawn up by a law practice in Kirkwall.

It clearly stated that Haera was to inherit everything if she was still around, and if not, the property was to be sold.

His only stipulation was that it couldn’t be used for real estate development.

Madeleine had no idea if that could be legally binding, but his wishes were clear.

As for his funeral, he had asked for no ceremony or celebration.

He only asked for his ashes to be scattered at sea.

There was no crematorium on Orkney; they’d had to send the body to Inverness and await its return in a different shape.

Now, on a cloudy day, Madeleine and Haera stood on a rented boat.

Haera carried a pillow-shaped, biodegradable urn designed for disposing of ashes into water.

She clutched it to her chest. “I never hugged him,” she said to Madeleine when the boat’s motor cut off.

“I never thought of it. I wish I had.”

Madeleine could say nothing to that.

She could only rub Haera’s back through the warm jacket she now required.

The moment came to drop the urn overboard.

Haera stepped to the railings.

She showed no sign of fear, no worries that an Each-uisge would rise up from the waves—a fear Madeleine had entertained a few times.

Rather, she looked at the urn, and the ocean, and then the urn again.

“I told you,” she said.

“He wanted to go back to the ocean. I don’t want that. I want him to stay on land, here with me.”

Tears ran down her face, and on the last word, she sobbed.

A lump, cold and solid, sat in Madeleine’s throat.

It was so hard to watch your loved ones disappear for the last time.

She remembered her own family’s coffins being slid into above-ground graves to keep them safe from New Orleans floods.

She and David had held hands while they watched their parents being sealed away.

When it was David’s turn, Madeleine had been alone.

She’d joined the Daughters of Grace shortly thereafter and had told herself she’d never be alone again.

“We can bring him back if you want,” she said, with some difficulty.

“You’re not legally obligated to scatter him here. But…”

“But it’s what he wanted.” Haera bent her head until her chin touched the urn.

“So I’ll do it. I just need a moment.”

Madeleine waited.

So did the boat’s captain, who stood a decorous distance away with his hands behind his back.

“Put your hand on me again,” Haera said hoarsely.

Madeleine could do better than that.

She slid her arm around Haera’s waist as Haera leaned over the rails and dropped the urn into the water.

Together, they watched it bob on the surface before it began to sink.

Once submerged, it would dissolve, and the ashes would scatter into the ocean.

She hadn’t thought to, but Madeleine found herself quoting a psalm.

“‘For He maketh the storm to cease, so that the waves thereof are still.’”

Haera propped her elbows on the railing and lowered her head as if it weighed a thousand pounds.

“He does a shite job, then. The storms always come back, and they wreck everything.”

“Then they go away again, and we rebuild.” Madeleine rested her head on Haera’s shoulder.

“It’s not the same as it was before, though.”

Haera kept staring at the spot where she’d dropped the urn.

“It’s not fair.”

“It rarely is,” Madeleine agreed.

“It wouldn’t be the same if I were still Each-uisge .” Haera hunched her shoulders.

“You heard Beathag. We— they —don’t love like humans. It wouldn’t hurt like this. It didn’t when my father died.”

“That seems like another kind of suffering to me.” Madeleine thought of her family and the Daughters of Grace.

There were a lot of ways to lose people.

“Grief is another face of love. I’d rather choose that. And are you so sure you wouldn’t have mourned as an Each-uisge ?”

Haera pushed away from the railing so quickly that Madeleine yanked her arm from her waist. “I don’t know. Let’s go. I hate this place.”

The words put a knot in Madeleine’s stomach.

Haera had longed to return to the sea, and now she spoke of hating it?

The words might come from her grief.

Hopefully the feeling would pass, and Haera wouldn’t hate her own origins forever.

Madeleine knew where those feelings led, and it was nowhere good.

This wasn’t the time or place to say so.

She nodded at the captain, who returned to the wheel.

The motor roared again, and within moments, they were cutting through the waves on their way to the land.

Connor, Jim, and Isla came by to pay their respects after the funeral.

They took Haera and Madeleine to the Kestrel and sat them at a table while they ordered drinks.

At first it was silent, which suited Haera fine.

She felt sick—had it been the rocking of the boat?

—and the beer wasn’t helping.

She sipped it while Madeleine sat next to her in the booth.

It had been so hard to let him go.

That made no sense. It wasn’t Jonathan .

It was a package full of something that had burned.

The sea had killed him, but fire had claimed him next.

Well. Now the sea had him again.

She’d never thought about Jonathan’s funeral rites, but if she had, she’d have thought he’d want to be buried at the farm he’d built with Haera.

But Connor had said that wasn’t legal anyway.

Perhaps that was why Jonathan had chosen Asga…

the sea over her.

A couple of days ago, Madeleine had told Haera that she didn’t believe Asgall had actually killed Jonathan.

That he might have been trying to save his life instead.

She’d laid out some case based on furrows in the sand, until she noticed that Haera was about to start screaming, and then she’d taken Haera’s hand and said, never mind, it didn’t matter right now.

As far as Haera was concerned, it would never matter.

At least she wasn’t on the boat anymore.

If she never went out on open water again, it’d be too soon.

The sea was no longer her home—if it had ever been.

Someone cleared their throat.

Haera looked up from her beer to see two older women standing at the table.

She recognized one of them: old Annie, who ran Annie’s Crafts.

Probably here to offer quick condolences, as she had the day after they’d brought Jonathan’s body back.

“May I sit down?” she asked, to Haera’s surprise.

Maybe it was business.

?tlaquoy sold wool to her, although it cost more to shear the sheep than they made back in sales.

Gave back to the community, Jonathan always said.

Was Annie here to ask Haera to keep doing that?

“I knew Jonathan since I was a lass,” Annie said.

She signaled Iona Darrow for a drink and smiled at Haera.

“Was mad about him for a bit. We all were, us girls. Good-looking bastard. Did he ever tell you about the time he played the fiddle right here at Christmas? Had the whole village stomping its feet and calling for more. Must be over forty years ago.”

Haera stared at her.

“No, he didn’t.”

“No? Ah, well then…”

As Annie told the story of a young Jonathan, another older woman appeared.

Eileen McKay, the island’s registrar who’d given Haera a false birth certificate.

She talked about how Jonathan had played pranks on the teacher in Jorsay’s one-room schoolhouse, as it had been then, but was so good-natured that even mean Miss Magurdy couldn’t stay angry for long.

Others came too, enough that eventually extra chairs had to be pulled up to the table.

Villagers with whom Haera had never exchanged a word sat down and talked their memories of a Jonathan Haera had never known.

Some of the memories were quite old.

These people hadn’t forgotten him, even though they were human.

Maybe she wouldn’t either.

In the middle of Harry Duggan’s endless anecdote about Jonathan and the time a dairy cow got loose on his watch, Madeleine put her hand on Haera’s arm again and bumped their knees together beneath the table.

Madeleine had touched her on the boat too.

It had been the only thing that got Haera through that awful trip without losing her mind.

Even after all of this—or maybe because of all this—there was nothing like Madeleine’s touch.

Whether she was human or not, Haera seemed to be made for it.

It was her only comfort.

Harry stopped talking and raised his eyebrows while he stared openly at Madeleine’s hand.

Then he gave a knowing little smile.

“It’s good to have friends in times like this, isn’t it?”

“Fuck off, Duggan,” Connor said affably.

“Does this story end with the cow kicking your head in?”

“What? I only meant?—”

“Yes.” Haera looked him dead in the eye as she put her hand over Madeleine’s.

“It’s good. And Connor’s right. You can fuck off.”

Something of an awkward silence fell.

Madeleine cleared her throat.

“Thanks for coming, Harry. Maybe it’s time to get the check.”

Afterward, Haera waited on the sidewalk with Jim and Isla while Connor and Madeleine settled the bill.

Jim sighed, shoved his hands in his pockets, and said, “How are you bearing up?”

He’d never asked her such a thing before.

Nobody had. Madeleine had told her this was how people showed kindness.

She replied, “I miss Jonathan. I’m not used to being human. My body’s all wrong, and I have to learn how it works. And I also have to learn about business. It’s horrible.”

Isla and Jim exchanged a wide-eyed look.

Had Haera been too honest?

She hadn’t spent enough time among people to tell.

Apparently that had to change.

Jonathan was no longer here to serve as both bridge and shield between herself and humanity.

Haera would have to learn to live in the world beyond ?tlaquoy.

Perhaps she should sound more positive.

“But Madeleine’s here. She’s a great help.”

What an understatement.

Haera couldn’t have survived the last couple of weeks without her.

Madeleine knew how to handle banks and solicitors and so on, and she explained everything to Haera as many times as she had to.

She cooked, because now Haera couldn’t subsist on raw meat.

She accompanied her on walks even on rainy days.

And she held Haera close every night, bringing her back from dreams of drowning.

Yes. Thank the Great Mare that Madeleine was here.

“Aye, for sure,” Jim said.

“Hasn’t she got to go pretty soon, though? She’s a teacher. School’s bound to start soon.”

Haera’s whole body went rigid.

Isla seemed to notice this.

She elbowed Jim, who grimaced.

“But, ah, when she does go, you’ve got us, haven’t you? Connor and me. And we know folk who’d be glad to help—Bruce Cursiter on the Mainland has a good spread and could give advice.”

Haera heard it all and understood perhaps half.

Madeleine was leaving soon.

She knew that. Hadn’t she thought about it on the terrible night everything had happened?

But then Madeleine had crawled into bed with her, held her, and for a moment, things were bearable.

Haera hadn’t thought about it once since then, not even on her solitary rambles.

She hadn’t let herself think about it.

To be without Madeleine—now of all times.

It wasn’t just now, though.

Ever since the night she’d realized she couldn’t kill Madeleine, the end of summer had hung over her like an axe on a fraying rope.

She’d known their time together must end and had tried to focus on embracing every moment before it did.

She’d never imagined it ending like this: not with her returning to the sea to die, but living a drastically shortened life on land without the man who’d been her mainstay for years.

And without the woman whose memory had sustained her, and whose reality had surpassed her wildest dreams.

The pub door closed behind her, and someone lightly touched her elbow.

Madeleine, of course.

“Ready to go?”

“Yes,” Haera said, her mouth dry, instead of asking the question she really wanted to.

Which was, as she looked down into Madeleine’s verdant eyes: Are you?

The day had wrung Madeleine dry.

She ought to stay awake and keep Haera company, but her eyes were sagging shut.

Haera didn’t seem inclined to talk anyway.

She was pretending to sleep while Madeleine held her.

When Haera had been an Each-uisge, she’d done the holding.

Now, her softer human body lay curled in front of Madeleine’s each night.

Its warmth usually lulled Madeleine to sleep after a series of long, difficult days.

Yes…sleep…Madeleine needed…

“You have to leave soon,” Haera said roughly.

Madeleine’s eyes opened wide.

“Jim said so. Your school starts soon. You have to go home.”

She was right.

It was nearly August. Lancaster public schools started in less than a month, and Madeleine had to be there a week before then.

She had under two weeks to stay in Orkney.

It would be enough time to help Haera sort out what remained of the logistics.

They’d already met with the lawyer in Kirkwall; Madeleine had taken diligent notes while Haera remained silent and subdued.

She’d sent copies of the death certificate to banks and insurance companies.

She’d worked with Connor, whom Jonathan had named his executor, and who’d clearly been taken by surprise by that.

That wasn’t what Haera was worried about.

Lightly, Madeleine said, “Anxious to get rid of me?”

She should’ve known that was the wrong tactic.

Haera’s grip on human humor wasn’t the best even on good days.

She rolled over. Haera might be human now, but she still had amber eyes Madeleine had never seen on a human face.

Now they blazed. “I don’t want you to leave.”

This conversation was always going to happen.

Madeleine still wasn’t ready for it.

It was easy to bungle sensitive subjects when you were exhausted.

Especially when the answer you most wanted to give— I won’t leave —wasn’t the one you had to give.

“I know it’s terrible timing,” she said carefully.

“You must feel like I’m leaving you when you need me the most, but Jonathan…”

Haera’s eyes grew even fiercer.

“No. You can’t replace him.”

Madeleine opened her mouth to say, I didn’t mean that.

But she’d meant it, and Haera knew it.

“It’s not just that. I never wanted you to leave. For years, all I’ve thought of is what would happen when you returned, and it was so much more than I imagined.” Haera touched Madeleine’s face, but not with her accustomed fierceness.

Instead, she brushed Madeleine’s cheek with trembling fingertips.

“I know we should have more time before we talk of what could be.”

Madeleine’s heart stopped.

Feelings tangled inside her, knotted like one of her uncooperative embroidery threads.

Apprehension and anticipation in equal parts, impossible to separate.

Especially when Haera was touching her skin.

They hadn’t made love since that terrible night.

As Haera stroked her, Madeleine’s body whispered its need, too long denied.

Down, girl. Definitely not the time.

“I know what you’ll say,” Haera continued.

“We need time to get used to who we are. I understand what that means now. But you were the one who said we should figure it out together, weren’t you?”

Used to who we are: Madeleine, a lesbian, and Haera, a human.

Pretty massive revelations to cope with before you jumped into a committed relationship.

Until now, Madeleine and Haera had been…

what would you call it?

“Friends with benefits”?

There wasn’t really a term for what they’d been.

She swallowed. For a moment, she felt as if she was back on the boat while the deck rocked beneath her.

“We don’t have to figure it out tonight. We’ve got three weeks.”

“Jonathan used to say I needed to look ahead,” Haera said bitterly.

“I refused. Now I know how he felt.”

Madeleine propped herself up on one elbow.

Her face grew hot at the reprimand, all the worse because it might be true.

“Haera, it’s late, and we’re both exhausted. Now isn’t the time to make any big decisions. You’re having to make enough smaller ones as it is.”

Haera gave her a hooded look.

“You mean with the solicitors and the banks.”

“Well, yes, and figuring out who’s going to run what, and…”

“You’re helping me with all of that. I don’t understand any of it until you explain it to me. Jonathan tried, but I didn’t pay attention because I never thought I’d be around long enough for it to matter.”

“I want to help.” Her throat was thick and hot.

“As much as I can before I…”

She didn’t end the sentence.

She didn’t need to.

Haera said, “Is your help meant to be a substitute for you?”

Madeleine flinched.

“Are you helping me because you feel guilty about leaving?”

“No!” At least she could say that honestly.

She leaned toward Haera, her elbow granting her extra height.