Page 14 of Painted

“Not like that!” Early nearly shouted, heating like a furnace. “I slept on the couch.”

“Mum,” Rebecca scolded Janice, rolling her eyes at her.

“I’m just saying that it would have been a lovely way to make Early feel welcome,” Janice defended herself with a shrug of one shoulder. “You are welcome, dear,” she went on. “You know that.”

“I do,” Early nodded anxiously. “That’s why I came here.”

“Good,” Janice said. “And if you need me or Robert or any of us to deal with your parents for you, you need but ask.”

“Thank you, Janice,” Early said, wishing the entire thing would just go away so that they could get on with their day, their work, and their life.

“Do you have any other clothes with you?” Rebecca asked, rubbing a hand on their arm.

Early shook their head. “I didn’t think to pack a bag before I left.”

“Sweetheart,” Janice said, full of embarrassing levels of motherly compassion as she made a beeline straight to Early to give them a hug.

Part of Early leaned into the affection. The rest of them just wanted to forget they were anything other than perfectly normal on an ordinary day.

“We have an entire room filled with clothes upstairs,” Rebecca said, grabbing Early’s sleeve and tugging them away from Janice. “It’s part lost and found, part stuff leftover from when this was a school, and part storage for the family when we don’t want something anymore but don’t have the heart to throw it away. I’m sure we can find a bunch of stuff in there for you to wear.”

“Thanks,” Early gusted out in relief. This was exactly the reason they’d come straight to Hawthorne House in their darkest moment.

“I’ll man the helm,” Janice offered, walking behind the desk. “Now, how does this telephone contraption work again?”

Rebecca sighed and grabbed Early’s hand, pulling them toward the door and groaning, “Mum!”

It actually made Early smile, despite everything going on. They might not be normal or ordinary, but the Hawthorne family would always be the Hawthorne family. They were their anchor in a stormy sea.

“I hate being so much trouble,” they confessed to Rebecca as she took them down the family corridor, then up the same staircase they and Rhys had walked up the night before, only all the way to the mythical third floor, which had once been the servants’ quarters.

“It’s your turn,” Rebecca said, brushing off their embarrassment. “Everyone goes through tough times now and then. You were so incredibly helpful to all of us last year when Raina died.”

“I was so new then,” Early said, highly sensitive to how traumatized the family still was over Raina’s death. “I didn’t really do anything but work.”

“You took a huge load off all our shoulders just by being here and manning the office,” Rebecca told them as they reached a door halfway down the hall. “You have no idea how much of a help it is just to have someone carry on with all the things we didn’t have the capacity for.”

Early nodded, but they weren’t certain they deserved that much praise. But if Rebecca thought they’d done something that meant they deserved the care they were getting now, then they supposed it was fair.

“This is the clothes room,” Rebecca said, switching gears as she stepped into the room and flicked on the lights.

Early was immediately hit by the unmistakable scent of decades’ worth of old clothes. It was the scent of every charityshop they’d ever been in times a hundred. It wasn’t just the scent that captured them either. The room was larger than they’d expected it to be, and it held row after row of rolling clothes racks packed tight.

“This is amazing,” Early said, stepping farther into the room.

“I said it was a lot, and it’s a lot,” Rebecca said, as though that were a problem. “Someone really needs to come clean it out, but now that the arts center is adding more classes and Ryan has been making noise about teaching fashion design classes, he wants to go over everything before we make a move.”

“Smart,” Early said, going straight to the nearest rack and brushing their hand over the rich fabrics that it contained.

“So pick out whatever you want,” Rebecca went on. “I think there’s a bin of underwear in the back, and I swear it’s all been laundered, if you want to go that route, too.”

“I need everything,” Early lamented. “It was so stupid to just run out without packing a bag.”

Rebecca had made it halfway down the aisle when they said that. She stopped and turned back to him. “Was it that bad, then?” she asked, all sisterly compassion.

Early tried to keep their gaze focused on the clothes they sorted through, hoping something would jump out for them to wear. They couldn’t avoid Rebecca forever, though. Rebecca was one of the closest friends they had.

With a sigh, they looked up. “I don’t know,” they said. “I think…I think I was just a coward about it. My dad was shouting because he found—” They stopped and swallowed, but seeing as it was Rebecca and not Rhys or anyone else they were alone with, went on with, “He found my underwear drawer.”

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