Page 78 of The Lone Wolf Café
“But once Juniper discovered you were a werewolf…”
“Can you blame her? Aster knew what I really was, and yet she still loved me. I even referred to her as my aunt. She always saw the good in everyone, even the werewolves… and they killed her. They left Juniper traumatized, with a permanent, disfiguring scar. They–”
Rowena choked down a sob. Once she collected herself, she let out another long, deep sigh, one laced with pain from her injuries. I’d nearly finished wrapping the muslin around her wound, and it was already damp and sticky from the poultice.
“I know what it’s like to lose a mother,” Rowena continued. “As mine passed from cancer only a few months later. I try to respect Juniper’s need to grieve, to have space, even six years later. But I still ache for us to heal what we used to have. I miss her so much.”
Images of Juniper flashed in my mind, making my heart hang heavy in my chest. The way the ragged pink flesh of her scar glinted under bright light. The discomfort on her face the first day she walked into the café and tried my blueberry scones. The glances in Rowena’s direction that ranged from neutral to oblivious to outright contempt.
But I knew Juniper was afraid. Even more so than the other witches of Wisteria Grove. I couldn’t begin to imagine the horror and betrayal she must’ve felt upon learning her best friend wasn’t a full-blooded witch. Worse, that her best friend was the same type of magical being that viciously killed her mother.
How could a bond broken so severely ever be mended?
“I lost my mother, too,” I said. I paused bandaging Rowena’s arm and clenched my palms, which were shaking from both the cold and my anxiety. “I was six years old. I don’t know what’s worse; losing a parent at a young age and barely remembering them, or losing them as an adult and feeling the pain of decades of memories.”
“I think they’re both hard in their own way,” Rowena replied, flexing her fingers as I resumed wrapping the bandage. As if she was checking to see they still worked. “If you don’t mind me asking, how did she pass?”
My fingers started shaking again. “She drowned. It was at night, during a storm. Since I was so young, my memories of it are fuzzy, but I remember my parents having an argument and my mother running out the door into the pouring rain. My father and my aunts chased after her, and I trailed behind. My twin sisters were infants, left behind in their cribs.”
I finished wrapping the muslin, squeezing it tight around Rowena’s arm. We sat there, alone in the dim light of the midnight moon, as I continued telling the story of my mother’s death.
“It was chaos. There were so many people running around, so much commotion… but I remember one thing very clearly.”
“What was it?”
“My mother, splashing wildly against the churning ocean, in the shape of a wolf. Bright red fur against dark water and sea foam. Then a huge wave took her under, and one of my aunts ushered me back into the house.”
“Nettie… I’m so sorry. That’s horrible.”
“You want to know the worst part?” I continued, anger and grief rising in my voice like those same stormy waves that took my mother. “They never found her body. She just disappeared,swallowed up by the sea. All the other werewolves on Hollenboro said she’d gone mad. That such a tragic accident was inevitable.”
Rowena didn’t respond. Instead, she reached up, wrapped her hand around the side of my face, and wiped a stray tear from the corner of my eye. And in that moment, choked up with grief, that was all I needed from her.
“Come on,” I wrapped my arm around the back of Rowena’s shoulder, preparing to help her stand up. “We need to clean the blood off you.”
Rowena was still shaky on her feet, but she no longer looked like she was about to faint, so I was able to guide her into the bathroom and settle her into a small clawfoot tub.
Once she settled in, her maroon nightgown draped over her torso and thighs like a silk curtain, she gave me a deep, knowing gaze.
“I’m not shy,” she declared, her voice barely a whisper.
I chuckled softly. “Well, that’s good, because I can’t help you bathe while you’re fully clothed.”
Rowena’s injured arm wasn’t very useful or mobile, so I helped her pull both arms through her sleeves and slid the bottom hem of her nightgown up her torso. As I did, her bare body was revealed inch by inch; from her thin, pale thighs to her ribby torso and small, perfectly rounded breasts.
I tossed the bloody nightgown off to the side, discreetly wiping my sweaty palms on the fabric. I was desperate to hide the desire that was so obviously emanating from my body, to maintain the professionalism of helping a friend clean her wounds. A friend that definitelydidn’thave a bare, slender figure that made my heart race with desire and my skin flush with heat.
I twisted a silver knob at one end of the bathtub, and it gave the same squeak as the hinges on my old, rusted cottage door. After a few seconds, a solid stream of water sputtered out of the nozzle, slowly warming under my outstretched palm.
The stream hit Rowena’s feet, and she flexed her toes as the hot water pooled around them. I noticed they were painted the same deep purple as her fingernails.
My heart was now thumping loud enough for me to feel it in my temples.
Stop it.I scowled as I fetched some soap and a sponge from a shelf above the bathtub.Focus.
I began scrubbing her skin, watching as the dried blood rehydrated, trickled across the tub, and disappeared down the drain. Despite my self-scolding, the blood pounding in my ears only grew louder. It spread to other parts of my body, forming a deep blooming sensation in my stomach, and a burning ache in the region just below it.
Gods, how I wished that sponge wasn’t in my hand. That it wasn’t separating my skin from hers.
