Eline Evans - Author
Excerpts
The Copenhagen Collection
The Music Room
“I looked at the photo, which I had seen a hundred times before. As a child, there had been periods where I had looked at it daily, obsessed over it, tried to glean some memory from it. It was of Helene and I, two and four years old, holding a little suitcase each, holding hands. I was in a sailor suit—even then, I had been a contrarian. Helene had on a lacy dress, and our faces were graver than any child’s should be.
“You were so sweet,” Mom said with a quaver in her voice. “It was the best day of my life when you came to us.” The rest of us were quiet. It was always a strange thing between us all, that our tragedy had been their stroke of luck.
Mom leafed through the pages, pouring over pictures of us in the garden, lingering by a photo of us by the Swedish cabin. She loved to dwell on the past, on our childhood, when things had been simple and Helene a strange little girl, sure, but still hers to dote on.”
"Annemarie nestled her back into me, bending her legs so they followed the curve of mine. I put my arm around her waist and slipped the other under her head. She took my hand and placed it under her cheek. In the middle of winter in the middle of a forest in Sweden, dressed in rough wool and denim, after days of heartbreak, near sleepless nights, she still smelled like roses on a summer night.
She angled her head so she could look out the window. “It’s funny,” she said, “how the stars always draw your eyes. They’re impossible to look away from.”
I nodded against her hair even if I disagreed. I wasn’t looking at the stars. I was looking at her looking at the stars. Because this might be our last hours together. I might never see her again. Never kiss her again. Never hold her again.
“Annemarie,” I said, “if I don’t—”
She turned and put her finger across my lips. “Don’t say that. You will. We both will. And Helene too.”
Anchor Heart
"A police car was parked down on Otto Mønsteds Gade and as she watched, two officers exited the building. Eva and her partner. He said something Charlotte couldn’t hear even with the window open. Eva laughed, then gave him a shove that made him do an exaggerated stumble off the curb. Charlotte caught herself smiling.
No. No distractions. Just the work. Still, she stayed at the window and watched Eva get in the driver’s seat, then watched the car drive around the corner. When they were gone, Charlotte sat down at her desk and opened the injury report. Krabbe had told her to get to it, so she would. She would prosecute the absolute shit out of this asshole."
"Eva kissed her cheek. “I’ll gladly spend the entire weekend between your legs, but for now, I want to just sit here with you.”
“And do what?”
“Talk. I want to know all the silly things about you.” When Eva bit her lip, Charlotte melted a little. “What’s your favorite cartoon character?”
Charlotte considered. “It’s Tinker Bell.”
“Really?”
“She’s a vindictive little bastard!”
Eva laughed. “I was hoping you’d say Roadrunner.”
“Why?”
“Jens likes to compare me to that dumb bird.”
Charlotte shrugged. “Roadrunner just runs. I’d turn around and eviscerate that fucking coyote with some of his own TNT. Be done with it and live in peace.”
“Roadrunner does that, though. Trouble is, the coyote just gets a sooty face.”
Bitterness tinged Charlotte’s own laugh. “And isn’t that just the perfect metaphor for life? Evil never dies.”
Winter Heart
"Elvira had spent the night running her fingers over the words by the bed. She could read them plain enough. The cell had no curtains, and it wasn’t hard to guess why, but it meant Copenhagen’s lights shone through the barred window. Most of the words on the wall were ugly, but some were sad—and some just confusing. Entirely meaningless in the context.
The mattress, wrapped in plastic, crinkled in the silence when she moved. Perhaps silence wasn’t the right word. Her own cell was quiet, but what sounded like drunken ramblings drifted through the bricks of the wall. Someone sobering up. Someone who would be free to go tomorrow probably. Not someone staring at a very lengthy prison sentence.
Not someone like her.
She smiled at the thought."
“I have a question,” she whispered, “but…it’s a bit hard to say.”
Leila turned on her side. “You can ask me anything.”
“You’re free to say no, and it won’t change anything between us, but…but since you like women and I think I do, too, we could…add benefits to our friendship?”
Idiotically, Leila opened her mouth to ask what benefits she meant, but understanding struck her just before she could make a fool of herself. “You’re suggesting we have sex? You and I?”
“It’s dull as dirt in here. Might as well make our own fun.”
“And…you’d want that sort of…um, fun, with me?”
“Yeah. You’re gorgeous, and I…well, I’d like to see what it’s like. If it’s really for me, I suppose.”
Leila didn’t have to see anything. Sex with Elvira would most definitely be for her. In fact, other than Maria, she struggled to think of a woman she had been more attracted to.“Unless,” Elvira said, “I’m not your type?”
“Oh, you’re absolute my type, but…”
“But what?”
“Are you sure? I like us being friends.”
“It won’t ruin that. We’ll still be friends. Just friends that fuck.”
The Interwar Collection
The Impossible Act of Georgia Cline
“I picked up the letter and took it to the window. Miss Georgia Cline, it said on the front, and below it our Richmond District address. I inserted my finger under the flap and ripped it open. A letter opener would have been neater, but I owned none. It wasn’t often I received mail.
There was only a single sheet inside. They hadn’t sent back my sketches. I unfolded it. It was dated just four days ago, on July seventh, 1938, but I supposed it didn’t have to come very far. Just from the other end of California. In the top left corner, in brilliant color, was a print of Snow White with a squirrel, a rabbit, and a chipmunk at the hem of her abundant yellow skirt. Next to her were the seven dwarfs—or their heads, anyway—while at the bottom was the evil witch bent over her poisoned apple. Surely, this was the most charming stationery in all the world.”
“She stood and came around the table and regarded my work over my shoulder.
I had drawn her not in the medieval-inspired costume of Snow White, but in an antebellum crinoline with an impossibly narrow waist and naked shoulders. Her hair, too, was something from the last century, all curls and ribbons. Her face was just a few lines, but I thought I had captured her beauty accurately.
She stared down at the paper, then blinked once, twice, and my throat dried. Just as I was about to apologize for whatever I had done wrong, her face softened. “Why is there an alligator?”
“He’s your sidekick. You’re from the South, aren’t you?”
She gave my arm a playful smack. “I’m from Charlotte, not some swamp in Florida.”
I erased the alligator and drew a skunk instead while she watched. “There,” I said. “A perfectly American princess.”
She was silent again, so I turned and looked up at her. “Do you like it?”
Her answer was to wrap her arms around my neck and kiss me.”
Gold and Grace
“Mademoiselle Severin, Copenhagen must surely be exciting if Montmartre lulls you to sleep.” Aurelie’s voice pulled me from my daydream.
I opened my eyes to find her smiling at me. Again, my heart did that little trot. She was as lovely as yesterday in a violet dress and a fashionable lilac cloche.
“Nothing compares to Paris,” I said.
“Quite right.”
She took my arm and together we strolled north. I watched her out of the corner of my eye. She strolled along as if she was in no hurry at all, like the most important woman in the world. Nearly every single person we passed glanced at us. Some craned their necks, even.
“What did you think of your debut as a model?” Aurelie asked.
“Ulla’s been very kind to me. I was only glad to help her friend. Have you known Gerda long?”
“A few years.” She winked at me. “We share a circle, so to speak.”
“I see,” I said with a smile that bloomed on my lips all on its own because I was pretty sure I did. Gerda’s paintings were all woman, which seemed to suggest exactly which circle. Back in Copenhagen, that particular circle had been mine too."
"She picked at a splotch of grass-green paint on her thumb. “Did you ever know your father?”
“I suspect he was already on the other side of some ocean when I was born. We lived close to the docks.”
“You’re lucky then.” She looked away and I studied her profile. She had one of those beautiful noses with a little bump on the bridge. There was something in her face, a pain I supposed, that kindled that same flame in me that Aurélie did. A desire to hold her close and make that pain leave her. How strange that on my second day in Paris I had met not one but two women who made my heart beat in a way it never had back home."
The Ruby Reaper Duology
The Ruby Reaper
"I had never imagined hell would be so beautiful. Outside the parlor window, the emerald rows of the sugarcane fields stretched toward a cerulean sea. The sky was clear, except for a brim of daisy petal white clouds that hung just above the horizon. According to Hr Bartholin, hell was fire and brimstone, orange and red, but these shades were all the most gorgeous blues and greens.
But, of course, the lush hills and turquoise coves were not what made St. John hell. It was the devils that called this place their home."
"Instead, she closed the distance between us with a step, cradled my face with her hands, and kissed me. It was deep and urgent and full of such longing that tears sprang to my eyes again. She pushed me up against the wall and hiked my soaked skirts up over my hips. With my tongue sliding against hers, I fumbled with the buttons of her shirt. Her hands dug into my hips, but then …
Then she stopped.
“Wait,” she said and stepped back.
It was a physical feeling, my heart sinking into my stomach. “Do you … do you want me to leave?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, but I want to remember. I … I don’t want to be rushed because I want to remember you and me.”
My heart somehow both leapt and galloped. “I want that as well.”
“And I want to first apologize for … for what I said. For calling you stupid. I let my temper run away with me because I was …” Her throat clicked. “I was …”
“You were frightened?”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “For Marín. And for Noémi. And … and for you.”
“I know that.”
“So will you forgive me?”
Taking a step forward, I put my palms on her face, and she opened her eyes. “I forgive you,” I said and leaned my forehead against hers."
The Emerald Eclipse
"I turned on my side and let myself look around the cabin, at the trinkets and ribbons and beads I had seen a hundred times. One of Marín’s masterpieces hung by the door—a painting of a pretty blue flower. My eyes were swollen, and the pillow wet beneath my cheek. I wasn’t a crier. Ria Riding Whip didn’t cry—but she had also never lost the love of her life. I had never thought a broken heart to be a physical ache, but my mother’s whip lashes were nothing compared to the pain in my chest."
“I missed you,” I said, because I sensed she was looking for words she couldn’t quite find. “I thought about you every moment.”
She moved her hand to my lower back and pulled me closer. “When you’re in a cell,” she said, “and hunger is gnawing at your insides, and the rats scurry over you in the dark, you let your mind wander. You question everything. It was a quick decision, and I wondered if I had done the right thing, giving you Marín. It would have made more sense, perhaps, to give her to Teresa and Noémi. They’ve known her longer. She loves them. But I realized I hadn’t thought about it that way. I had wanted her to stay with someone who was … was my other half, I suppose. That way, she would be closer to me after I was gone.”
My throat had gone too tight for talking, so I settled for a nod.
“When you walked into that tavern in Coral Bay,” she said. “I knew you were the type of woman I could spend a night with, but I never thought beyond that. I never imagined I’d find someone who could be more to me. And I certainly didn’t think it would be you, Ria Schandorff, a plantation owner’s daughter. But … but you are that woman to me.” She shook her head. “I’m not explaining it very well, but do you understand what I mean?”
“I do,” I whispered."
