He’s already running, prying the knife from her curled fingers. “It’s all right, Elsie. No, no, no, you’re going to be all right.”

“I don’t want to be!” she wails.

I sprint to join them. Her dress and arms are covered in blood. I hold her wrists and let her lean against me as Matthew tosses the weapon away.

It’s nothing more than a butter knife. I gently lift one of her arms, and she hisses in pain. Her wrist is shredded, a tartan pattern of shallow wounds. For all the mess, she doesn’t seem to have cut any major arteries.

“I want to go, but they won’t take me!” she cries. “Why won’t they?”

“It’s not your time, Els,” Matthew says.

“But why?” She lashes out, shoving him away from her, then wails, wincing from the pain in her wrists.

Matthew turns to me, unfazed. “We need to dress her cuts.”

I pull off my coat and rip out the lining in strips, then set to work wrapping them around her wrists and tying them in place. When I’ve finished, I glance up to see Matthew staring at me.

“This is her house,” he says, nodding to Mrs. Wickett’s open door. “I was thinking we’d go look for bandages.”

“Oh.” I stare down at my ruined coat. “Shit.”

“That worked too.” His eyes sparkle.

A snort bursts out of me. “I panicked!”

Mrs. Wickett giggles along, wild, and suddenly, I’m laughing so hard that my eyes are streaming. Matty’s deep-throated laughter echoes off Jo’s tearoom wall, and it hits me that this is the first time in seven years I’ve heard that sound come out of him.

“Why are we laughing?” Mrs. Wickett asks, still giggling through her nose.

“I do not know, Elsie.” Matthew’s chuckles subside, but a smile remains. “Maybe we just needed to. Come on, let’s get you up to Alder House. Everybody’s gathering there. This isn’t a day to be alone.”

He glances at me, too quickly for me to read anything real into it, but long enough for me to imagine all manner of things. Our interlude has ended, for now, forever, I don’t know. I don’t even know why I did it. I was compelled, but that feels suspiciously convenient. I could get away with anything today with that excuse.