Archive of Our Own

Thing kept the count on the frame of the sidecar, one scratch for every week, and by the time the road ran out there were dozens of them.

Wednesday had not asked him to.

Fester had long since returned home. He knew better than to intrude on a hunt an Addams had laid claim to. He left the motorcycle and a note in handwriting that looked like a cheerful ransom demand. The note said Bring her back warm. Wednesday burned it for being sentimental.

Her typewriter was gathering dust. She had missed a semester, and her mother's calls through the crystal ball had gone unanswered more often than not. She did not think of any of this as a sacrifice. Everything else had simply stopped competing with the only thing that mattered.

The wolf lived in a gorge two hundred miles past the last road, in country where the rivers carried names given by people who had since stopped breathing. Wednesday knew exactly where. She did not charge in. She studied the ground first, because she intended to catch her target, and a hunter who rushed only taught the quarry to run.

She had watched the wolf drink at the same bend every dusk. She had watched it cross the river at the flat stone, where the water was shallowest. She had watched it sleep on the south ledge in the afternoons, in the single place the sun reached, with its back against the rock and its face toward the only approach.

Thing had measured a paw print against the span of his own fingers. Wednesday had converted the print to a mass, the mass to a dose, and the dose to a dart she mixed herself. She tried a fraction of it on herself first, to be certain it would stop Enid and not kill her, because she was unwilling to be wrong in either direction.

At the next dusk she walked out and stood in the open river, in plain view.

The wolf came down the bank without hurry. Wednesday had spent years facing opponents who told her what they would do with their shoulders. The wolf told her with its shoulders. When it sprang she was no longer where the spring ended, and it landed in the shallows with its weight on its forepaws and its jaws shut. It meant to pin her, not to tear her apart. Even now. It turned. It sprang again, faster, and she let it pass close enough to feel the heat of it along her sleeve, and the dart went in high on the haunch, where the muscle was thickest.

The wolf snarled and bared its teeth. It came at her a third time, slower, and a fourth, slower than that, and she did not step aside for the fourth. She sat down on the flat stone and let the animal reach her. Its legs failed a body-length short, and Wednesday caught the great head before it struck the stone and eased it into her lap.

Wednesday had rehearsed this moment time and time again. None of it was useful.

What she had instead was a decision, made long ago. Enid was a pack creature who had cut herself off from her pack, and the only word that could reach something like that was one that could not end. Wednesday had assembled it the way she assembled every approach, according to what the target would respond to. It was an instrument. She selected it as one selects a blade.

"Enid," she said. The ear nearest her turned. "It is Wednesday. I am not leaving. Not tonight, and not after tonight. I am your pack. You are stuck with me now, forever."

The word did not feel like a blade in her mouth.

The wolf's breathing changed. The heaving slowed, then evened out, and the golden glare of the eye that rolled up to find her faded, until what was left was Enid's blue. A sound came out of the animal, low and unfinished, and it was not a growl. It went down through the stone and up into Wednesday's spine. She did not know what it meant. She knew only that it was an answer, and that she had not been prepared for there to be one.

She sat with her hand flat against the wolf's neck and said nothing else. She had already said the only part that was necessary, and she did not trust herself with more.

It took a long time. The fur drew back first from the muzzle and the paws, and what lay under it was pale and shaking. The bones went the slow, wrong way. It was not an easy thing to listen to, and Wednesday listened to all of it. When it was done she took a change of clothes from her pack, bright ones, packed against her better judgment long ago, and set them within reach. Then she looked with great attention at a pine tree on the far bank. This was not modesty. She was not certain what her face was doing.

"Wednesday." Enid's voice was a scrape. "You brought me back? You found me? How?"

"I said I would."

"That was ... that was months ago."

"It was."

"You counted."

"Potentially."

A small, cold hand tapped twice on the stone beside Enid, and the rest of Thing climbed into view wearing an expression Wednesday would have called smug, had he possessed a face.

Enid laughed. It turned into a cough, and the cough into something wetter. Cloth rustled as she dragged the clothes on, and Wednesday kept her eyes on the pine.

"I heard it," Enid said, when she could. "What you said. The wolf heard it too. She doesn't ..." Her breath hitched. "She doesn't get that wrong. Did you mean it?"

It was a good question. The honest answer was that Wednesday did not know. It had been a tool. Until that moment she had not been certain it could also be anything else.

"Yes," she said.

It was the first time she had ever lied to someone she had no wish to deceive, and it did not feel like winning. The wolf had believed it too. Wednesday elected not to think further on it.

Enid leaned across the little space between them, and Wednesday turned her face back in time to be kissed. It was brief and clumsy and tasted of river water and the lovely raw remains of yesterday's meal. Enid's hand, when it found Wednesday's collar, shook so badly it nearly missed. Wednesday did not move. Wednesday did not breathe. Then she did both, a little.

"Okay," Enid whispered against her cheek, and it carried meaning beyond the words. "Okay. Forever."

"Forever," Wednesday agreed. It was easier the second time.

They made camp nearby. Enid slept wrapped in a blanket with Thing curled at her collarbone, a hand's worth of guardian, and Wednesday sat across the fire with a notebook open on her knee.

She needed to record all the events that had transpired. Even without her typewriter she could not lose valuable writing material, or information. And a thing said aloud could be argued with. A thing on paper could only be read. She wrote until the fire was coals, and she wrote what was true. It was not flattering and she did not make it so, because an apology that flattered its author was only a second lie. When she finished she tore the pages out along the spine and folded them in four.

She held the fold above the coals for the length of one long breath.

Then she took it back and put it inside her boot, against the arch, where she would feel it with every step. She told herself she would decide in the morning.

She did not decide in the morning, or on any morning that followed.

Three Winters Later

The apartment in Middletown had been advertised as a two-bedroom. One of the bedrooms held Enid's sewing machine, six dress forms, and a shelf of fabric organized by a system only she understood. The other held the beds.

They were pushed together, the two frames bolted at the corner, because Enid had grown to demand physical proximity.

Wednesday woke early, as she always did. Enid's arm lay across her ribs and Enid's hair lay across both pillows. The snood hung from the bedpost, where it would stay until Enid needed it, which would be at the last possible moment, in a panic.

She did not move. She had learned that Enid woken early was a hazard with teeth, and that Enid woken later was merely a hazard.

She lay there and took inventory, which was a habit and not a need. The window was gray. The radiator ticked. By the window a dress form wore half of something green, pinned along one seam with a surgeon's care. At the foot of the bed Thing slept in a shoebox that Enid had lined with a scarf.

She eased out from under the arm in stages. Enid made a noise and rolled into the warm place Wednesday had left. Wednesday stood looking at the dent where she had been, filled in already. It was a very small thing to find difficult to leave.

In the kitchen she made the coffee. It took four steps and she did not need the card taped inside the cabinet, but she checked it anyway, in case the order had changed. Oat milk, no sugar, half a teaspoon of cinnamon that Enid claimed was a breakfast spice and Wednesday considered a minor crime. She carried the mug back and set it on Enid's side of the bed, where Enid's hand would find it before her eyes did. Then she wrote on a yellow square in block capitals, because she had learned that a note was kinder than an absence.

THE COFFEE IS FOR YOU. IT IS WARM. I AM IN THE KITCHEN.

Wednesday looked at the note she had left. It was kind, yet it was not enough. So instead she spoke up.

"Good morning," she said aloud, from the doorway, and Enid's eyes opened.

"Whoa," Enid said, thickly. "You said that out loud."

"I have been told it helps."

"By who?"

"By you. Repeatedly."

"Huh." Enid found the coffee, found the note, read it twice, and pressed the yellow square to her chest as if it might get away. "I'm keeping this. It's a love letter."

"It is a Post-it."

"A love Post-it."

"That is not a category."

"It is now."

Wednesday sat on the edge of the bed. A year ago she would have handled the matter by Friday and informed Enid on Saturday. "There is something I would like to ask before I do it."

Enid went still, just slightly. Wednesday saw it, and put it on the list of things to be less. "Not that. A man in your studio class has been presenting your sleeve construction as his own. I can make that stop. Quietly. Permanently, if you prefer, although I would advise against it for logistical reasons."

"Wednesday."

"I am asking whether you want me to."

Enid looked at her for a long moment over the rim of the mug. Her face appeared soft and not a little stunned. "You're asking."

"Yes."

"Okay. No. Don't. I'll do it myself, I've got a whole speech. I'll make him cry." She grinned. "But thank you. For asking."

"I will not act," Wednesday said, and was surprised to find it cost less than it would have a year ago. "Tell me if you change your mind."

The fashion studio let out at 4:10 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Wednesday knew this the way she knew the periodic table. She had told herself, in the first month, that standing outside the building at 4:05 was efficient. She had stopped telling herself anything about it since.

Her mother had once said that an Addams did not choose so much as discover, generally in the middle of something else. Wednesday had called this theatrics. She had since been obliged to revise the estimate, and she revised it again each time the door opened and her pulse did something she had not authorized.

Enid came out sideways, shouldering the door, a garment bag slung over one arm and a pin cushion still strapped to her wrist. She saw Wednesday and her whole face changed.

"Hold this," Enid said, and handed over the bag. "It's three weeks of my life. Don't let it touch the ground."

Wednesday held it in both hands, like evidence.

They had been officially dating since last spring, which Enid called a technicality and Wednesday called a legal fact. It had taken two winters for either of them to say the word aloud, and it had been Enid who said it. Wednesday still did not have the words for it. She knew how to show she cared. That would surely be enough for now.

That night, with Enid asleep, Wednesday sat at the desk under the window and pulled open the bottom-left drawer with two fingers.

Under a tin of typewriter ribbons lay the pages. Four sheets of notebook paper folded in four, gone soft along the creases from three winters of being handled less often than she thought about them. She did not unfold all of it. She never did. She opened the first sheet and read the first lines, as she had on perhaps a dozen nights.

It was an accounting, and that was why she kept it. Each time there were fewer lines she could put her name under. Tonight she counted. The line about the lie was still true, because it described a thing that had happened. The lines about what she would do again were not. She could not say which day that had changed. This bothered her.

She had never given it to Enid. She had meant to, through the first winter and the second, and had never found the sentence that went with it. There was also the matter she was reluctant to examine. The pages described a person. That person had been real and had done what the pages said. A true thing did not become false because it had expired. It became a fact about her, and facts about her had to be kept somewhere. She had held the fold over a flame once. She had not done it again.

So it stayed in the drawer, where it could be consulted and not mistaken for the present.

She folded the sheet along its creases, laid it back under the ribbons, and pushed the drawer shut with her hip.

It rebounded a finger's width and stopped, as it always did.

Wednesday regarded it. She would fix it this week. She added it to the list, which was a long list, which she kept in her head, and to which, in the matter of this drawer, she had been adding for a year.

Ajax texted to say he was in town until tomorrow, that coffee was non-negotiable, and that she should bring her scary girlfriend.

Enid grinned at her phone and crossed the room. Wednesday sat at the typewriter by the window. She had been at it since dawn, in the short violent bursts that meant the book was going well, and Enid had learned not to interrupt a burst. But there was a gap now, a breath between sentences.

"Ajax is in town," Enid said. "He wants coffee. The place on Main with the weird muffins, noon-ish. You in?"

The typewriter stopped.

Enid knew that stillness.

"You should go," Wednesday said.

"I'm going. I asked if you wanted to come."

"I heard you ask."

"So ...?"

"You should have your friends." Wednesday had not turned around. "I would only be in the way."

The statement landed wrong under Enid's ribs.

"You wouldn't be in the way. He asked for you. He literally said bring the scary one."

"I am aware that I occupy a considerable portion of your life." Wednesday addressed this to the window, evenly. "There ought to be parts of it that are not mine. I will not crowd them."

"Crowd." Enid laughed, and it came out wrong. "Okay. If you don't wanna come, say that. That's allowed. I'd rather you just said you didn't want to than ..." She flapped a hand at the whole room. "Whatever this is."

"I did not say I do not want to."

"You said you'd be in the way."

"Because I would be."

"Because you decided I need space from you. Without asking me."

Wednesday turned around then. Her face was perfectly smooth, which was never good. "If you wish to describe my consideration as control, I cannot prevent you."

"Don't do the voice."

"I have one voice."

"You've got like forty, and that's the one you use when you want me to concede."

"I am trying to tell you that the door is open." There. That one had an edge on it, and Enid watched Wednesday hear it and not take it back. "Every door. I will not force out your life to live mine in its place."

Enid knew what open doors felt like.

"Nobody's asking you to." Her voice cracked in the middle of it. She hated that. "You said forever."

Something crossed Wednesday's face and was gone before Enid could name it. "I mean it. But forever still includes your freedom."

The radiator ticked. Out in the hall, someone's door opened and closed. Wednesday looked at her, and Enid could see her choosing, the way she always did, weighing the true sentence against the kind one.

"It is only coffee, Enid," Wednesday said. "Go."

For a second, nothing in the apartment moved.

Only coffee. It was almost funny. A whole year of a person who could talk for twenty minutes about the poison profile of a mushroom and not once say what she wanted for lunch, and the one time she picked a word, that was the one.

"Right," Enid said. "Okay. Sure."

"Enid, that is not ..."

"No, it's fine. You're always honest, it's one of the things I ..." She stopped, because this was not a good time to finish that sentence. "I'm gonna go get changed. I'm gonna go get coffee with my friend. Since you've decided."

She walked into the studio room and shut the door. Not a slam. A very firm click. The dress forms stood around her in their half-finished things, headless and unbothered, and she put her forehead against a green sleeve. She did not cry. She was a little impressed by that.

She could see it, if she squinted. The thing Wednesday had been trying to do. Be good. Be small. Give her room. It was the worst possible version of kind.

That doesn't make it okay.

A few minutes later she heard the front door. Not a slam, either. Wednesday never slammed. The latch just closed, softly.

Enid stayed where she was a while. Then she took out her phone, typed

to Ajax, and sent it.

She still had to say something to Wednesday. Not a text. Text sounded cold, and she was mad, and she was not going to be the one who sounded cold. A note, then. A real one, on paper, in the stupid way Wednesday did it.

Wednesday kept pens and quills in the same top drawer, which was exactly as ridiculous as it sounded. Enid skipped the quills, found a ballpoint, clicked it, and was reaching for the pad of yellow squares when her hip bumped the desk and the bottom drawer slid open another inch.

Something white was folded in there, under a tin of typewriter ribbons. The outside fold had one word on it, in Wednesday's block capitals.

ENID.

The creases were soft when she lifted it out.

She unfolded the first sheet. It was Wednesday's handwriting, small and upright and merciless. No date. No hello.

Enid read the first line twice, then the whole page again, and it said the same thing both times.

Forever. She had carried that word through a gorge and a winter and every bad night since. It was the one thing that held. She'd said it back, once, on a flat stone, still shaking. Just to get what I want.

No. No, wait. I asked her. I asked and she said yes. The wolf heard it. The wolf doesn't get that wrong ...

But the wolf had been wrong, apparently, or the wolf had been lied to, and Enid's hands were shaking so hard the paper rattled.

And the pieces moved. She could feel them moving, snapping together. I would only be in the way. You're free. It's only coffee. It had all been a rehearsal. Wednesday had sat at that typewriter since dawn, and in the quiet between the bursts she had been writing this, and then she'd walked out of the apartment with the drawer still open. She's leaving. She was already leaving. She just needed me to say it first.

That was when the itch started.

It began in her forearms, under the skin, bone-deep, the itch that meant the wolf was awake and wanted out. It climbed her spine one vertebra at a time. Her scalp prickled. Sweat broke along her hairline, and her heart threatened to escape her chest.

No. Not now. You know what this does. She had read everything the pack had on it. An alpha who shifted in distress could get stuck. She'd taken that exact risk for Wednesday once, and then spent months finding out what it cost.

Breathe. In. Out. She had barely started when her breath went ragged, then sharp, then too fast, hiccuping in her throat. The tears landed far below her, and she was too disconnected from feeling to notice.

Her spine cracked. Not the real break, not yet. The warning ones. The ones that said last chance.

She got the sweater off. She got her boots off and her jeans halfway. The snood caught on an ear that was already the wrong shape, and she tore it away and flung it, and her phone fell out of her pocket and hit the floorboards face up. Ajax's name lit the screen.

The page was still in her hand. When she finally looked at it, her fingers already going long and wrong, the round dark spots had spread across the paper, over the last word.

Then her knees were on the floor. The two beds, bolted together, went apart as the bolts snapped. Her claws found the boards. Her shoulder found the doorframe. There was a part of her that kept speaking in words for a while after the rest of her stopped, small and bright and very far away, and what it said was please be wrong.

Then there was no one left to say it.

The door had been closed. It was not closed anymore. She went down the stairs and out into the cold, and nothing she passed led anywhere at all.

Wednesday had walked for an hour and reached the correct conclusion in the first ten minutes.

The cemetery on the hill behind campus was where she did her best thinking, among people who had stopped having opinions. She had stood there and replayed the morning at quarter speed, as she would the footage of a crime, and found the exact frame where it went wrong. It was not the suggestion that Enid go alone. It was the last sentence. It is only coffee. She had meant that she would not hold Enid by a leash made of her own need. What she had said sounded like a person who did not mind either way. It had been kind in intent and cruel in effect, and she had known it was both before it finished leaving her mouth.

So she had done what she was learning to do. She had gone to the café across from the library, not the one on Main, where Ajax would be and she would not intrude, ordered Enid's coffee in a voice that left no room for correction, and bought a muffin, which was a violet not found in nature. She walked home composing what she would say. I would like to come to the coffee. I will be quiet. I would also like to say the last thing again, correctly. It was not elegant. It had the advantage of being true.

The door of the apartment was open.

Not ajar. Open, wide against the wall, with the cold of the stairwell coming in. The latch had not been picked and it had not been unlocked. It had been overcome.

Wednesday stood on the threshold with a cup of coffee in one hand and a violet muffin in the other, and took inventory.

Thing was already out of her pocket and across the floor.

The hall had fur on it, long and pale, in drifts along the baseboards. The bedroom doorframe had lost a strip of wood the length of her forearm, and below the gouge were four parallel grooves, cut clean through the paint. The boards in front of the desk were scored in long curved lines.

The beds were apart.

She looked at that one longer than the others. The frames had been bolted at the corner, and the bolts lay on the floor, snapped clean through, and a gap a yard wide stood between the mattresses. Fur lay thick on the pillows. On her side, too.

Enid's sweater lay on the floor, and her boots, and her jeans, inside out where they had been kicked off, one leg torn at the knee and no worse. That was the detail that bothered her most. Enid had had time to undress. She had understood what was about to happen and done the practical thing, alone, in a room that was no longer safe, and had not once called for anyone.

Her phone lay face up by the desk.

Thing came back out of the bedroom holding the snood. He held it up, and Wednesday looked at it, and neither of them said anything about it. There was nothing to say about it.

«She ran,» Thing signed.

"Yes."

«Not far. The claw marks stop at the stairs. She was fast.»

"She was in distress."

Thing pointed at the desk.

The bottom-left drawer stood open. It had not closed properly in a year, and she had meant to fix it this week.

The sheet lay on the floor beside the leg of the chair, one corner pressed with the print of a very large paw. Wednesday picked it up. It was damp at the edges. Round dark spots clustered at the bottom of the first part, over the last word, where the ink had begun to feather and run. The outside fold, which she had not looked at in a long time, said ENID in capitals she had made with great care, in a notebook, by a fire.

She sat down in the chair, unfolded all of it, and for the first time in three winters read it from start to end, as someone else would.

She checked it against the woman who had made coffee that morning and left a note about it. Some lines survived the comparison. Most did not. It was an excellent record of a person Enid had never met.

The damp stopped after the first part. Everything below it was dry.

Enid had never reached I regret. She had never reached I learn, or the lines beneath, where the poem turned. She had read five lines, five of the worst ones, on a morning when Wednesday had handed her the future, and no one alive could have read those five lines and supplied the others.

There was no date on the pages. To anyone who found them, they were simply now.

Her eyes hurt. This was irrelevant. She noted it and set it aside.

"I told her," she said to the room, quietly, "that it was only coffee."

Thing climbed onto the desk and signed nothing at all, which was the kindest thing available. He laid one cold hand on her wrist.

She allowed it for the length of one breath. Then she folded the pages, put them inside her coat, and stood.

«Kit?» Thing signed. «Darts. Rope.»

"No."

«She is a wolf, Wednesday. A big one.»

"I know precisely what she is." She set the cup of coffee on the desk, still steaming, where Enid would see it, and the violet muffin beside it. "The first time I used a dose and a rope and a lie. I am not doing it that way again."

Thing regarded her for a moment, then climbed back into her pocket.

Wednesday went down the stairs and closed the door behind her, unlocked, in case anyone came home.

She found the wolf at dusk.

The ridge above the river caught the last of the light on its western face, a long shelf of bare rock with a drop on one side and scrub on the other. The wolf lay at the far end of it with her back against a boulder and her face toward the only approach. Wednesday had spent the afternoon crossing the town on foot, reading the ground. She stopped forty feet away and let Thing climb out of her pocket and go left, where he would be clear of anything that happened.

She did not take out anything. There was nothing to take out. She sat down where she was, on the bare rock, with her back against the nearest boulder and her face to the river, and waited.

The wolf rose. The hackles were up. The lips drew back from the teeth. The sound it made was low and went on for a long time. It was the sound of something that had been told to leave, had left, and had now been followed.

Wednesday did not turn her head. Enid would have to come to her.

The growl broke off. She heard claws on stone, heard the animal cross the forty feet in slow, uneven steps and stop close behind her. A long uneven breath.

"There is a letter," Wednesday said, to the river. "You read part of it. I wrote it on the night I lied to you in the gorge, and every line was true on that night. I will not ask you to ignore what it says. I am only going to tell you the part you did not reach."

Nothing. The wind moved in the scrub.

"It was not just me in here. For most of my life it was us. One of me felt things, and the other made certain the feeling was never permitted to show, and I called the second one my self. I broke myself into pieces on purpose, because pieces are easier to keep at a distance. Then you walked into my life, and the pieces ..." She stopped. Started again, flatter. "I am trying to be one person. It is slow. I fail at it sometimes."

The wolf had come another step. Wednesday could feel the heat of the breath on the back of her collar.

"I pushed people away so they could not leave me. I hurt people so they would not be near enough to see. I believed that pain was what I was owed, and I was so accustomed to it that I mistook it for weather." A pause she had not intended. "I am not special. I am not even very different. I am unique, which is a smaller claim. And I was never alone. I told myself that I was, loudly, for years, and you declined to be argued out of existing."

Behind her something shifted its weight.

"The letter says that I would use you again. I would not. I have not, in a long time. I do not know the day that became true, and that disturbs me more than the letter does." She breathed. "In the gorge I said that it was forever. I said it because it was the one word I had that could not end, and I wanted you back more than I wanted to be honest. That was a lie. It stopped being one. I should have told you the day I found out. I have been too occupied with being careful about everything else."

The sound in the animal's chest had changed. It was no longer a growl. It was lower and uncertain, and it was very close.

"This morning I said that it was only coffee." Her voice did not do what she wanted at the end of that. She let it. "It was not only coffee. I wanted to come, and I told myself the wanting was the thing to be corrected. That is what I should have said. I am afraid of what I am capable of doing to you. I have decided that I would rather be afraid in your presence than competent in your absence."

She did not say the other word. It was too large, and she was sitting on a rock. She said instead, "I would like you to come home. I am asking."

The river went on below them. For a while that was all there was.

Then she heard it begin, the long slow wrongness of the bones, and she kept her eyes on the water the whole way through. It took a long time. It was not easy to listen to, and Wednesday listened to all of it. It was the least she could do, and also the only thing.

When it was quiet, she took off her coat and held it out sideways behind her without turning. A hand took it. Fabric rustled.

"Enid."

"Shh." Enid's voice was shredded and small. Then, "Look at me."

"I cannot."

"Why not?"

"Because if I look at you I will not be able to stop my face."

"Your face is allowed."

"Not yet."

"You're doing the thing again, where you stare at nothing to avoid facing me."

"It is a very interesting river."

"It's a river, Wednesday. It's a normal river."

"It has a great deal going on."

Enid made a sound that broke in the middle. It was the right kind of crying this time, the kind that came out and kept coming, ragged, with hiccups, and Wednesday felt it more than she heard it. A weight settled against her shoulder. A damp patch spread through her sweater. Enid's forehead pressed into the join of her neck. She did not turn her head. She put her arm around her instead, with great care, the way she would hold something she had broken once and did not intend to break again. Her own eyes stung. Two solitary tears slid down her face before she could stop them, and she looked very hard at the far bank and let nothing else follow.

"You brought a whole bag of clothes last time," Enid mumbled, after a long time, into the sweater. "In the gorge."

"Yes."

"This time it's just the coat."

"It was the one that was available."

"Liar."

Wednesday said nothing.

Enid pulled back far enough to speak. "I knew something, you know. In the gorge. She did. The wolf. She believed you." She sniffed hard. "She doesn't get that wrong, Wednesday. Part of it was true. You just didn't know which part yet."

Wednesday regarded the river. "I am aware that I was outvoted by a wolf."

Enid laughed, wetly, and it shook them both.

"There is a pocket in the coat," Wednesday said. "The inside one."

A rustle. A pause. Paper unfolding, and a small, careful silence. "It says ENID on it."

"It is yours. It has been yours for three years. I did not know how to hand it to you. I could not find the sentence that went with it." She swallowed. "I have now said it to a river, which is as near as I come."

"I only read the first part."

"I know. The rest was dry."

"You checked."

"I check everything." She kept her eyes on the water. "It is too dark to read. The end is the part that matters. I memorized it."

"Say it."

She said it, low, to the far bank. "I wanted you to hate me. I needed you to hate me. If I was the villain, then my actions were evil. If you forgave me, then my mistakes were just that."

The river went on flowing.

"Okay," Enid said. Her voice was thick and perfectly steady. "Then I forgive you. So they were just mistakes."

Wednesday's eyes burned.

They didn't talk much on the way down. Wednesday carried her, because Enid was exhausted from the change. Enid let her. She decided not to say anything, because it was the single most Wednesday way of saying sorry she had ever seen.

The apartment door was still unlocked and the stairwell light was still on. Thing went in first, came back out, and signed «Clear.»

Enid stood in the bedroom doorway in Wednesday's coat and looked at her handiwork.

"I will repair the frame," Wednesday said. "I will not sand the grooves."

"Why not?"

"Provenance."

"That's creepy."

"It is history."

"It's both."

On the desk the coffee had gone cold and the muffin sat beside it, violet and defiant. Enid ate it, still in the coat, while Wednesday took a screwdriver and a tin of wax to the bottom-left drawer. When she was done she pushed it with one finger, and it went in all the way, and clicked.

"There," Wednesday said. "It was on the list."

"You have a list?"

"I have several."

"What else is on them?"

Wednesday turned and looked at her, a long straight look, the one she had avoided all evening. Enid watched her nearly look away, and then not. "At present," Wednesday said, "very little that is not you."

Enid had to sit down.

Her phone was where she'd left it, with seven unread messages, the last of which was just

She typed

"I will be quiet," Wednesday said, from the desk.

"You will not."

"I will be as quiet as is consistent with my nature."

"Okay. Deal."

She got up, found the biggest hoodie she owned, and came back in it. Wednesday had not moved. She was standing very straight in the middle of the wreck with her hands at her sides, the way she'd stood in the middle of their first room, waiting to be told what the rules were.

Enid hugged her. Wednesday did not dodge it. Her arms came up after a moment, stiff, then less stiff, and when Enid pressed her face into her shoulder Wednesday said into her hair, very quietly, "I would like to say it. I do not yet have the sentence. It is closer than it was."

"I know."

"How?"

"You fixed the drawer."

They did the beds together. The snapped bolts were still scattered across the floor. Wednesday swept them into one palm and asked, "Together or apart?" Enid said, "Together," and Wednesday said, "Good," and they lifted the frames, lined up the holes, and Wednesday ran the replacement bolts home while Enid held the corner steady.

Thing hung the snood back on the bedpost, where it would stay for now.

It was late. The radiator ticked, and the sky had gone black. Enid lay with her head on Wednesday's arm and listened to her not sleeping.

"You never asked me," she said. "What the sound was. In the gorge."

"I did not wish to be told the answer to a question I had lied to produce."

"It means yes." Enid watched the ceiling. "It's what a wolf says when ... what we say to a ..."

"I know."

Enid turned her head. "You know?"

"I looked it up afterward. In a library. So that I would understand what I had said." A pause. "There is a second part."

"There is." Enid's heart was doing something enormous and not very dignified. She put her hand flat on Wednesday's collarbone, over the place where the neck met the shoulder, where the pulse moved under the skin. "A bite. Here. It's permanent. It scars, and it means ... It means nobody's the one left out in the cold. Either of us. Ever. That's all it means."

"That is not all it means."

"No," Enid whispered. "It's not."

Wednesday was quiet for a long time. When she spoke, her voice was very even, and it cost her. "I have several scars. I would like one that I chose." She breathed. "I would like you to. Please."

"You said please."

"Do not make it a thing."

"It's a thing."

"It is not," Wednesday disagreed.

Enid bit down, her jaw closing like a door with both of them finally on the same side.