Page 5 of Wateredge

Victoria lifted a hand and touched Lark’s forehead, the fingers coming back with a small droplet of blood. Dammit, she must’ve really hit her head earlier when she took the tumble at Ceridwen’s feet. Lark covered the bruise with her own palm. That got her a hiss and a tsk from the women in front of her.

“Lark, Lark, Lark…” Victoria shook her head. “You are so concerned about the sanitary conditions of my kitchen, and yet you just go and do this? Let Ceridwen heal you first, you stubborn child.”

Lark absorbed the words like a foreign language, without understanding. It was what accompanied them that rocked her to the core. Two pairs of hands were holding her. And somehow, for once in a long, long time, being held in place did not trigger a reaction in her. Did not make her taste bile or bite her own cheek to avoid passing out. Still, some habits were hard to break, and she leaned away, slipping off the stool, her back hitting the chrome counter hard.

“Victoria… Maybe—” Ceridwen’s voice was full of concern, coming out in carefully neutral syllables. Lark felt like the floor swallowing her would not be enough.

“Mrs. Crowhart, you asked Sheriff Redding to stop by, so he sent me. All his other deputies are busy, something about an unusual number of tourists on the island and this storm!”

A loud, abrasive, decidedly male voice called from the front room. Victoria pursed her lips, clearly displeased at the interruption.

“I’ll be right there, Deputy Thomson!”

Lark felt her hands go numb, her stomach suddenly leaden. Sheriff…

Police! They had called the police!

The room tilted. Her vision grayed at the edges. The pale green eyes widening in shock and something akin to recognition were the last thing Lark remembered before everything went dark yet again.

Voices filtered through a dense fog of fatigue and pain in her temple.

“Where did you even find her, Ceridwen?”

There was some rustling and movement not far from her, Lark trying to fight her way to full consciousness, desperately clawing at anything that would pull her out. She needed to wake up, she needed to get up and go. She couldn’t be here, not with the police⁠—

“She was trying to avoid that feline ginger menace outside of the Tavern, and I damn near plowed into her. It was my fault, I honestly wasn’t looking, and she’s small. I… Dammit, I pushed her, and she fell. I saw blood, and I saw her clothes…” Ceridwen trailed off.

Lark knew why. She was wearing a windbreaker in the middle of a New England winter, a sweater the thrift store gave away for free and a scarf that was so raggedy even Lark wondered how it held together. She could not fault Ceridwen for being disgusted. Except the voice sounded anything but.

“I couldn’t just leave her. And then she panicked, just a full-on attack, and here we are. Would you have wanted me to leave her out there? The snow is coming down hard.”

Lark struggled to open her eyes. The lids felt heavy, weighed down by fatigue and dizziness. She must have been concussed or something, which would make her entire situation even more untenable, because she couldn’t afford to be concussed. Heck, she couldn’t afford to be anything but okay. And even that version of okay had to be not hungry or thirsty till she found a job.

“Well, and this is her second or third panic attack in a row. Poor songbird,” Victoria whispered somewhere to Lark’s left.

“Poor songbird, indeed. Those clothes will get her killed in this weather. Do you think she needs to see the doctor? Would the clinic even be open?”

Somehow, Lark knew that it was Victoria’s hand on her brow, smoothing her hair back, dabbing at the cut on her forehead.

The mention of a clinic got her to jump almost upright.

“No, no! No clinic!” Lark struggled against her own fatigue more than against the hands that were no longer holding her down.

She swayed, woozy, head heavy and spinning.

“I’m okay, I’m okay, I swear.”

“Sure you are, songbird. How many fingers am I holding up?” Lark could see Victoria’s hand. The number of fingers was a mystery. Her heart was beating so far up in her throat that she just shook her head, trying to gulp down any answer. She’d never get it right, and then they would not let her leave.

“Alrighty then. Stubborn. Stubborn is good. Occasionally. Not sure it’s the right thing to do now, but it got some color into your cheeks. Ceridwen, get into that left-hand fridge, I have some soup there. I think this songbird has not eaten in some time, and perhaps we need to tackle one thing at a time where she is concerned.”

Lark gulped, but something in the words did not sit right with her.

“Or maybe you don’t need to tackle me at all, ma’am.”

Instead of taking offence, as Lark had assumed she would and had braced herself for, Victoria threw her head back and laughed.

“Look at you, getting some of that spunk back. The soup will do you good. And there is no need to get out in the cold and the storm right now. I’m not opening the restaurant. Even the island workaholic over there will keep her flower shop closed. This snow will fill the hotel and the bed and breakfasts, but being outside is dangerous. Do you have a room to stay?”