Chasing Memories

[7] Grudge

    After a week of deflating radio silence, Arin's invitation to return to the cabin filled Elise to the brim with electric glee. It was difficult work, but it was a long-term gig that fit around her university studies and came with healthy, reliable pay. Beyond all practical factors, the prospect of working with a published author's own manuscripts was too exciting for Elise to turn down just because that author happened to dislike her. She and Florence were both adults – they could keep things professional between them.

    "I am keeping things professional," Florence said as Elise lay her bag beside her seat. "I professionally can't stand mouthy critics that haven't written a word of fiction in their sad little lives."

    Arin hovered in the doorway and tapped away on his phone. "That got a little personal towards the end there, I think," he said, half-raising his finger in Florence's direction. "Remember, Elise is here to give your ideas a little push, that's all. She's here to help you."

    Ignoring Elise's reassuring wave, Florence buried her face back in the book on her lap. "Get lost, Arin. I don't need help."

    "The faster you hammer this draft out, the sooner you can get rid of her," Arin said as he slipped his phone away. "Look, just hear her out before you shut her out, alright? You're paying for her to be here right now whether you listen to her or not, so you might as well make her work for the money."

    A creak of the study floorboards punctuated Florence's silent bristling. Elise dragged her armchair closer to the window, dust specks leaping from the plush red fabric onto the rain-flecked glass. From across the room, Florence's chair rocked as she shifted her weight over its frame. "I'm paying, am I?" she growled, turning her face to catch Elise in her bitter stream. "Thanks for telling me."

    Tension sweltered around them, and Arin pinned the door further open with the stone doorstop. "We agreed this yesterday, Florence. I'd never arrange payments without running them by you first, and you know that." With a furrowed brow, he checked his watch as he leaned into the corridor. "I've got to run now, but it'll be time for your meds in a bit, so you won't be alone for too long. Play nice, you two!"

    The door trembled against its doorstop, every puff of humid breeze quaking through its wooden frame and sending aftershocks through Elise's bones. Catching the author's eye only pushed Florence's face further into the pages, and Elise abandoned her seat before it carried her away on a wave of dark listlessness. "Have you written anything since I was last here?" she asked, grasping at the top of the author's head for a lifeline.

    "I don't need babysitting," Florence uttered into the pages of her book. It was a hardback, yet the sleeve had been removed to leave a blank black cover. "I'll write when I feel up to it."

    "Why romance?" Elise asked suddenly, the question surprising her as it fired into her mind. She made her way to one of the study's bookshelves and scanned the spines on show, yet the rebuke from Florence for her curiosity never came. Instead, the writer peered through the curtain of her black curls, her lips still. "I mean, you don't read it from what I can see, and you don't seem like the...sensitive type. But you've been writing these kinds of books for decades. Why?"

    Rain tapped against the windowpane. Florence lowered her book, not bothering to stop the covers folding shut. "I don't write because I like it," she said, her eyes flaring with a light Elise had not seen before. "If I only liked writing, I'd have given up before I started. No, what got me going as a young one wasn't enjoyment or passion. It was anger."

    Clutching her arm, Elise took a tentative step forwards. "What do you mean anger? At what?"

    "I was the only daughter in a house full of men. What do you think I was angry about?" Florence swapped her book for the tumbler of cranberry juice on the table beside her, sucking her teeth as she swallowed the ruby-red liquid down. "My father never let my mother have a paying job, and he and my brothers tried to do the same with me. I spent my teenage years reading their books after school and thinking of ways to shove their controlling nonsense back in their big whinging faces."