cherry-colored love (on and on and on)

____________

To see such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless.”

— Maggie Nelson, Bluets

____________

Everyone tells them that it’s meant to be.

That it doesn’t matter whether or not she got the mark the moment they touched because Eddie did. 

Tale as old as time: boy meets girl, boy befriends girl, boy and girl play tag together, girl catches boy and leaves a soul mark the size of her hand on boy’s arm.

In the moments after, Eddie stopped running and stood still, eyes wide with bewilderment for something he’d only heard stories about. And then the other kids stopped too.

They looked Eddie over. Looked Dani over and that was when the fuss began. Eventually, a teacher found them, took one look at Eddi’s black-marked arm, gave them both a bright smile and took them inside to call their parents and share the good news.

Except—

The hand Dani used to grab Eddie’s arm was bare. No mark to be seen. Just as normal as it had been before she caught him.

Her mother burst into the school, frantic with the thrill of not needing to worry about her daughter after all, only to find—

Nothing.

“There has to be some kind of a mistake,” her mother said to anyone who would listen. 

Eddie’s mother repeated the phrase while Eddie and Dani sat side-by-side in the school office, swinging their feet back and forth and not speaking to one another. Whenever Dani looked up, Eddie was staring at her and smiling and Dani isn’t quite sure what to do with that.

There isn’t a mistake.

There isn’t.

The truth of the matter is this: Dani left Eddie with a soulmark that he did not leave on her.

A strange occurrence.

Uncommon, but not unheard of—or so her mother tells her for years, citing old newspaper articles from decades past that she never seems to actually be in possession of. It doesn’t mean they aren’t meant to be.

It doesn’t mean that, when Eddie kisses her at ten-years-old, she has any reason to feel...wrong. Off.

It just means that their story is a little different. That’s all.

You’re lucky , their parents tell them as they grow up crushed beneath the weight of the whole thing’s foregone conclusion. You’re so lucky to find each other so young . 

And the thing is: if you tell someone something long enough, eventually they’ll start to believe you.

So, when Eddie drops to one knee two months after they return home from college and asks her to marry him, Dani says yes. Of course she will. She’s his soulmate, right? That’s what soulmates do.

They find each other and love each other and spend the rest of their lives together.

When Eddie says, “I love you,” Dani says, “I love you, too,” because it’s true. She does. He’s her best friend. She’s grown up pressed to his side, trapped but not necessarily chafing against the walls that keep her there. Not at first.

Not until—

______________

“ Eddie ?”

The truck is stopped just ahead, it’s tail lights red and flashing and so bright that Dani’s eyes take a moment to adjust. People are gathered around, shocked, talking to one another. Someone is running off to call an ambulance.

The truck driver is getting out of his cab, knees nearly collapsing from the realization of what’s just happened. And Eddie—

He’s breathing still, hands twitching, reaching out for something that they’ll never find and there’s so much blood .

The hard gravel of the road bites into Dani’s knees and palms, scraping against her skin. Beneath the sleeve of his sweater is Eddi’s soul mark. It’s right there. But she can’t see it.

She’s cold. So cold , like she’s freezing over or something and Eddie is—

He’s breathing still. He’s bleeding and he’s breathing and there’s a frantic voice in the back of Dani’s head that is begging and praying and pleading for this to be a dream. She has to wake up. Any moment now, she’ll blink and be back in her bed. Safe and sound. She’ll roll over and Eddie will be there, sound asleep. Snoring softly in that way her mother says she’ll get used to.

She’s going to wake up. That’s what’s going to happen.

Eddie gasps in a breath, his lungs expanding against his shattered rib cage, his bones nothing but loose gravel in his skin. His fingers brush Dani’s knee, smearing blood against the fabric of her stockings and—

Someone is touching her shoulder. Someone is pulling her away. There are lights now, ambulance and police lights, and too many people are talking at once and someone is screaming—piercing and splintered and violent.

It isn’t until they’re lifting Eddie’s broken body onto a gurney that Dani realizes it’s her.

______________

If there’s a word meant specifically to signify someone left to mourn their fiancé, Dani doesn’t know what it is. So, she is thrust into the role of the widow by default.

It’s not acting. It’s not pretend. Eddie is gone and dead and buried with the black mark of her five-year-old hand around his arm and that’s more than enough to keep Dani from sleeping most nights.

She quits her job—too exhausted to imagine giving too much more of herself and getting nothing in return. Her mother tells her it’s a mistake, that she’ll regret it in time, but Dani can’t help but think of it as the first decision she has ever made for herself. And only for herself.

People hug her. People take her hand and squeeze it, like it holds tangible evidence of Eddie’s existence—of their relationship with one another. They tell her to be strong. 

It gets better . 

But it doesn’t.

People are constantly dropping food off at her house, as if the ability to cook for herself had been lost with Eddie. They attach cards to their gift baskets and flower bouquets.

Sorry for your loss.

With deepest sympathy.

We share your grief.

They drop by unannounced and wearing black, wanting to comfort her, speak to her, reach out and soothe her with a touch. 

Eventually, she stops answering the door. Lets her mother get it. Lets the phone ring. She finds an old pair of winter gloves in the back of her closet and puts them on, tired of the slide of skin against her own. 

All it does is remind her what was missing. And there were so many things she couldn’t give Eddie in the end, but the pale skin of her left palm is the sorriest one of them all.

Two months. That’s as long as she can manage. Two months and then she’s emptying her savings account and packing her bags. Calling a taxi to take her to the airport. 

Keeps the gloves on for every handshake, every interaction.

Safer that way. Distance, she’s decided, is the easiest path to walk alone.

______________

London, it turns out, is not as different from home as she worried it would be on the long plane ride over. The currency takes some getting used to and it’s certainly strange to see people driving on the other side of the road, but she likes it.

It’s nice. Anonymous.

The hostel she stays in is nice enough, but clearly not meant for long-time residence. Her roommates come and go, most of them kind enough. Some of them quiet. There are others, still, that want to know everything about her—why she’s there, how she’s liking it, what her plan is.

It gets slower once the colder months are over, and Dani spends a few weeks alone, job hunting and spending her time in pubs. She’s done the “sight-seeing thing” at least three times already, so she starts staying in her room more and more. 

There’s one ad in particular in the classifieds of one of the papers she reads that crops up at the start of every month. A live-in nanny gig for two children at a house in the countryside. It intrigues her—sets something sparking under her skin—but she stays away from it. Worries. 

At the beginning of her sixth month there, a woman around her age moves into one of the other beds in her room. It’s strange at first, because Dani has never seen anyone but college grads seeing the world on a budget be in such high spirits in a hostel. But this woman—Ivy—is the exception.

She has pretty, blue eyes and a nice accent—sort of like the ones Dani’s always heard in movies—and clothes like she comes from money. But she’s also the first person who doesn’t give Dani a strange look for the gloves. On her first night, she practically drags Dani to the nearest pub for dinner, and spends the whole time talking about a wildlife special she saw on the BBC about sea otters.

Dani laughs a lot. It’s the first time in as long as she can remember doing so.

______________

They’re not quite friends. No, Dani’s walls are too far into their construction for that and Ivy doesn’t seem like she’s planning to stick around for long enough that it might matter. Still, it is nice to have someone her age around. Someone to say good morning to, to catch a meal with. 

Occasionally, she’s using the phone in the hallway when Dani comes back at the end of the day. Her voice is always pitched low and intimate, smiling like spring morning. Dani tries not to eavesdrop, but she does catch snippets by accident. 

Things like: soon and oh, Nora and I love you, too.

That’s when Dani finally understands that Ivy’s perpetually rosy pink lips aren’t makeup after all. 

And it isn’t like it’s any of her business, but there’s a photograph that Ivy keeps by the side of her bed of her and another woman—shorter than her, strawberry blonde hair, her lips rosy pink as well, both of them smiling in a beautiful garden. She’s got her eyes on the camera, but Ivy’s eyes are on her and Dani immediately understands what she’s looking at.

“Our parents weren’t too happy when they found out,” Ivy says, by way of explanation, when she comes back into the room to see Dani looking the photo over. “She’s in America right now. That’s where I’m headed, actually. Just thought it best to stay here rather than home while I got my visa sorted out.”

“Oh,” says Dani, setting the picture back down and making a hasty retreat. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

Ivy waves her off, unbothered. “It’s alright. Whoever passes up the opportunity to talk about their soulmate?”

She says it so easily, so offhand, and it isn’t as if Dani is ignorant to same-sex soulmates—isn’t even like Ivy is the first person she’s known with one—but Ivy is the first to say it so boldly, so without shame. Just proud and eager and undeniably in love.

“Oh,” says Dani. “What’s she like?”

Ivy smiles. “Wonderful. Smart and funny and a little reserved. Kind of like you,” she says, giving Dani a fond look.

For reasons Dani has been suppressing for as long as she can remember, something in her thrills at the attention.

“What about yours?” Ivy asks, gesturing to Dani’s gloved hands, pressed between her knees as she sits on the edge of her bed.

“Oh,” says Dani. Then: “I don’t...I don’t have one.”

Ivy gives her a kind smile. “I’m sure whoever she is, she’s worth the wait.”

______________

It isn’t until the day after Ivy leaves that Dani lets herself consider what she’d said.

She .

And…

Oh. 

Dani hadn’t let herself consider that before.

______________

That ad for the live-in position shows up in the following day’s paper. Dani sits in a cafe and reads it through five times, curiosity pinging her thoughts from one end of her mind to the other. 

Like a puzzle missing a few pieces. A half-formed question with an answer in invisible ink. Right on the tip of her tongue.

She pictures them—these children. Young, brilliant, and lonely. Dwarfed by the extravagant home around them. Quiet. There’s something missing, isn’t there? Something that’s gone from inside Dani, too.

And then it hits her.

______________

A pretty, young woman named Rebecca welcomes her into Henry Wingrave’s office. Dressed sharp. Talks sharper. Offers a hand for Dani to shake and only hesitates a moment when her hand meets the warmth of Dani’s glove.

“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Clayton,” she says.

Dani smiles. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

______________

Bly Manor is a place painted over with a thousand fables in the making. The house looms above the tops of the trees like shrine to something long since dead and gone. The sun blooms over the rooftop, spreading warmth across the green grass and the hedges—the flowers growing into each other, winding and braiding and becoming something else. Something better.

It’s huge. A fairytale. Dani has to blink a few times to be sure she’s not imagining it.

There are two pale and smiling children waiting for her and Owen at the end of the drive. The girl rushes over to tug Dani from the car, gushing about how pretty she is and how splendid it is that she’s there. The boy manages to break into the rambling in order to express his own excitement. Give his own name.

The housekeeper introduces herself next, her eyes flitting to Owen every other second in a way that almost makes Dani feel like she’s intruding. It isn’t until she’s pulling her hand out of their handshake that she sees the faint lilac coloration of Hannah’s left palm, the same shade as Owen’s right one. 

When Flora tugs her towards the house, Hannah lingers and Dani can hear her greeting Owen softly, privately. It’s strange—they’re standing so near, but Dani can’t understand what they’re saying. As if they’ve slipped into some private, intimate language that only they understand. 

It reminds her of Eddie’s parents, how quietly they spoke to one another—if not in words, then in glances, in a trailing touch to the arm or the shoulder. Of Ivy’s soft phone conversations at the hostel. There’s a tight knot of something in Dani’s chest that she thinks might be yearning, but she can’t be sure. 

How lovely it must be , she thinks, not for the first time, to have met the one person in all the world that is meant for you.  

How peacefully Hannah and Owen must sleep at night.

Dani cannot possibly imagine.

“Come on,” Flora says, pulling on Dani’s hand so adamantly that the fabric of her gloves begin to slip. “You just have to see the sitting room. It’s so perfectly—”

“—splendid,” Miles finishes, matching his sister’s pace. He gives Dani a cheeky grin, hands in his pockets and cheeks flushed pink from the rush of the afternoon.

Dani smiles. 

It’s strange, but the carved-out hollow of her chest fills itself, just the barest amount. There is still so much negative space to fill, but it’s a start. The first she’s had in a long, long while.

Something about the children... fits . 

Maybe that can be enough for now.

______________

Dinner is a nice enough affair. Owen cooks and Dani ruins the tea while Hannah serves the children their food and sits down at the head of the table, a smile on her face that doesn’t falter even the slightest bit when she meets Dani’s eyes.

“So, what did Miss Clayton think of the house, loves?” Hannah asks between bites.

Dani opens her mouth to speak, but Flora beats her to it.

“That it’s perfectly splendid,” she chirps, throwing a gap-toothed smile Dani’s way.

“I feel like I might need a map,” Dani admits. “This house is going to take some getting used to.”

“I’d be happy to donate some breadcrumbs to the occasion, should you need to make yourself a trail,” Owen tells her. “It might make you feel a little butter .”

Dani blinks, still for a moment, and then understands the joke.

“Oh, hush,” Hannah says and Owen winks in return. 

“Someone’s in a crumby mood,” he says and Flora giggles.

It’s something to watch, the way the two of them look at one another. The way they speak and interact—that easy balance each brings to the other. No hesitation, no questioning. Something else—something tethered and strong and hard to watch with the ragged edge of each heartbeat in Dani’s chest.

Dani looks away. She picks up her tea and the porcelain slips through her cotton-covered fingers. 

She catches it before it breaks, but not before it spills.

______________

“Are you cold?” 

Dani rests her elbow on the edge of the bathtub and fixes Flora with a curious look. “Am I cold?”

Flora nods, a crown of bubbles toppling off the top of her head and landing with the soapy cloud around her small body. “Yes,” she says. “Sometimes, when my hands are cold, I wear gloves, too.”

Oh. Yes.

Dani clears her throat, pulls herself upright and hides her hands on her lap. “Um, actually, I’m—” She cuts herself off. Pushes the words around in her head, trying to find a better order to say them in. “I just like to keep mine covered.”

“Why?”

“I don’t really like to touch other people with my hands. That’s all.”

“Why?”

Of course that wouldn’t be answer enough.

Dani sighs. “Well...sometimes when you touch someone else, you...things get complicated. And I want things to be simple.”

There. That’s it. 

Flora hums a song under her breath, thoughtfully forming a bubble beard on her little chin. “My mummy said sometimes soul marks don’t mean you have to be with someone,” she says, voice a little sorrowful. “Daddy had his before they got married and she loved him very much anyway. That’s what she told me.”

Dani bites her lip. Wonders what she’s supposed to say to that. “Sounds like your mom was really smart,” she says. 

“Who gave you yours?” Flora asks. “What’s he like?”

It’s as if something inside of her splinters. Dani sucks in a harsh breath and counts to five before answering.

Thinking of her conversation with Ivy, she echoes her last answer, “I don’t have one.”

A soul mark or a soulmate? 

Dani’s not sure which she means.

“Oh.” Flora tilts her head back as Dani fills a cup with bathwater, using it to rinse out her hair. The cotton of her gloves gets a little wet, a little water-logged, making her fingers feel just a little bit heavier. 

She slips her left one off a moment later so that she can pull the drain plug and then dries her hand off, slips it back on.

“Well,” Flora says as Dani wraps her in the warmth of a white towel, “I’m sure he’s going to be perfectly—”

______________

In the quiet of her bedroom, Dani lays in her bed and holds her bare hands up to the moonlight. The wind rattles against the window, the walls creaking and groaning. Her right hand is freckled—a dot here and there, skin practically luminescent in the darkness. Her palm is creased, skin folded by lines just like everyone else’s. The three in the middle scoop back and forth across the skin, forming an M shape if the first inward diagonal was missing.

Eddie’s M had been a V instead, lines deeper than her own and calluses on the backside of his knuckles. His skin was always soft and dry, smooth when he gathered her hand in one of his own.

She looks to the left one and finds the same pattern, there. Lines faint in the darkness, like they were drawn with a pencil and then rubbed out by time. The curtains cause the moonlight to end severely just above her waist. She holds her left hand at the edge of it until her palm is dark, blackened out like Eddie’s arm had been.

She’d tried, hadn’t she?

Put her hand to almost every part of his body over the years, like trying to strike a match in the pouring rain. But her hand always came away the way it’s always been. 

She read somewhere once—when she was sixteen and tired of feeling nothing in a kiss but Eddie’s chapped lips and wet tongue—that black was a bad omen in soul marks.

It meant mystery and fear and luck turned sour.

Death .

Dani slips her hands beneath the covers and closes her eyes.

Thinks of Hannah and Owen and their eyes lit up as they looked at one another over dinner. Wonders what kind of omen lilac is. What pink means.

______________

The next day, out in the garden, Miles’s spider walks from Dani’s gloved hand and back into the grass while Flora shrieks about it twenty feet away and Miles laughs, still looking a little awed at Dani’s tenacity. 

Above them, the clouds are swollen with late morning rain. The smell of it hangs in the damp air, clinging to the scent of flowers and grass. It’s a beautiful day.

“Better luck next time,” Dani says, giving Miles a smile.

He grins, his brow already furrowed as he becomes lost in the beginnings of a plan. “I suppose so,” he says and off he goes, hands in his pockets, back to the manor the way they came.

Flora waits for Dani at the top of the hill and grabs for Dani’s hands once she’s close enough. She talks as they walk, babbling about this and that—almost no participation from Dani necessary, save for a nod here, an, Oh, yeah? there. Easy enough.

Miles throws fond looks their way as they go, too charmed by himself to hang back, but enjoying the morning all the same.

It would be strange, how quickly they’ve taken her into their lives, if Dani knew nothing of what they’ve gone through still so recently. Children are more capable of grief than some, but they also crave forward motion. They long to rebuild and fix and become again and Dani is no stranger to that feeling.

The way they laugh and reach for her is almost enough to have her gluing rubble together to make something resembling faith .

Here she is.

She has to take a moment to breathe at the edge of the lake, and the children stop to throw pebbles into the water. In school, she learned about the Titan, Cronus, who learned that one of his children was destined to overthrow him, so he swallowed all of them up before they could. But Zeus was hidden by his mother and he grew up angry and vengeful and killed his father anyway. And Dani used to wonder well what good is choice anyway if Fate is going to find us no matter what we do . 

But she thinks she’s starting to understand now. Because Fate can only decide where you’re going, but there is freedom in how you get there.

You choose for yourself the kind of ending you deserve, even as that red string tugs you further and further along. 

Eddie always talked about them in terms of destiny. We’re supposed to be together, Danielle , he said at the end. That’s how it works .

It was their last argument and she could not make him see her position— why don’t you understand that I want a say in the matter —that she couldn’t compromise— you’re my everything, my soulmate, how do you not know that we’re meant to be —with what she knew in her heart was wrong.

And at the end of it all, they stared each other down with their teeth bared, one of them unable to listen, the other unable to be heard.

But Eddie died. And here she is. She’s not sure how to mourn him exactly. She’s not sure she ever has.

You’re running away from it, Danielle. You think this is something that will go away with time.

The last thing her mother said to her on the phone echoes in her mind. Makes Dani shiver. Makes her joints ache at the memory. But Dani is not running—she’s staying ; she’s choosing to bloom where she’s planted.

Here. With with these children, these people. At the edge of a lake, under the iron grey sky, the wet grass leaving green residue on the sides of her sneakers with every lift and fall of her feet.

______________

That afternoon, having lunch in the kitchen, everything changes course. It’s normal enough at first—Hannah and the kids set up at the table, Dani sitting across from them and Owen at the oven, finishing up the food. But then someone— the gardener, Dani thinks—walks in and the breath is stolen right from Dani’s lungs. 

Jamie .

That was the name Owen mentioned in the car—the one Hannah said offhandedly in a side comment the night before. Dani hasn’t had time enough to try and conjure an image of what she might look like, but now she doesn’t need to.

Jamie is a slight woman, wiry muscles that flex and move beneath the pale skin of her arms; her mouth drawn taut, like a bow, winding up a smile and then letting it go with the zest and vigor of an exploding star as she teases Miles and Flora. The delicate contour of her neck glistens with sweat, her brown hair curly and mussed, like she happened upon its handsome style by accident. It looks soft enough for Dani to curl her fingers into and—

“Are you alright dear?” Hannah asks, voice drawn in a whisper. 

Dani blinks. Looks at her. “Yes. Y-yeah.” She swallows thickly and bobs her head up and down to make her answer seem more convincing. “I’m fine.”

Jamie spares them a glance, her eyes lingering on Dani just long enough to feel like forever. Briefly, Dani wonders if she’s supposed to say something—if she’s supposed to form some kind of introduction or shake a hand. But Jamie seems to be under the impression that they’ve already met, or else she doesn’t care for the formality of it all.

There’s something like relief ballooning in Dani’s veins when she realizes this. Jamie has a quality in her eyes, in her smile, in her energy that makes the thought of touching her dangerous.

Dani pushes this thought away for another time.

“Hungry, then?” Owen asks, just seconds after setting a plate down in front of Jamie. 

Jamie looks up at him, mouth half-full, and swallows. “Work up an appetite doing physical labor,” she says. “Not that you’ve much experience with that, yeah?”

“Not sure that’s a conversation to be had around the wee ones,” Owen returns, grinning.  

“That so?” Jamie’s eyes flicker between Owen and Hannah, before settling back where they started. “God bless her.”

Hannah exhales and shakes her head. “The pair of you, I swear.”

Jamie snorts out a laugh. Owen chuckles and takes a seat at the other end of the table. 

“I only call ’em like I see ’em, Han,” Jamie says and sends Hannah a wink. Hannah mutters something under her breath good-naturedly and turns her attention back to the children. 

Their conversation falls into the easy cadence of familiar affection, neat and efficient. Dani lets the sound of it fill her mind. The heat of Jamie’s gaze washes over her skin every few seconds for the rest of the meal.

Dani keeps her eyes down. Hands to herself. Minds her own business and doesn’t dare let herself think that maybe—

______________

That night, Dani sleeps poorly. Not because she cannot fall asleep, but because Jamie’s face will not leave her mind. The shape of her eyebrows and the bow of her lips. Her white teeth and her broad smile, those shimmering green eyes.

There’s a tugging—insistent and fervent—at the center of her breast bone when she wakes up. It aches like a deep bruise, pinching and pulling when she turns a certain way. 

Here’s the trouble: she knows where it’s trying to take her.

It lessens by the kitchen door and worsens in the classroom during the children’s lessons. It pulls her to the window overlooking the garden as Miles works on long division and Flora works on cursive. Out in the damp below is Jamie’s figure, flitting across the grounds with a ladder or a shovel or something else that Dani’s eyes can’t quite understand.

She’s too far to see the curve of Jamie’s jawline, but her imagination has no trouble conjuring the image for her. Dani bites her lip and curls her gloved fingers together, twisting and gripping as she fights the pull to the edge—to the stairs, to the door, to the gardens, to this woman who should feel like a stranger but feels like some kind of abstract mooring that Dani’s been living her entire life, thus far, without.

______________

“How are you getting on, then?” Jamie asks one day.

They’re in the garden, the children hard at work pulling weeds per Dani’s instructions. Hannah is sitting on Jamie’s other side, lost in thought it would seem, and there is something about the way Jamie looks at her that makes Dani feel like they’re the only two people who have ever existed on this earth.

This is not the first time they’ve spoken—a word or two at meals, in the halls, a good morning or goodbye —but it may as well be for the way Dani’s endearment flares at the sudden consideration.

“Oh,” Dani says, as if the question is one to ponder. “Um...good. Yeah, the kids are great, so...And everyone’s been so nice.”

“Good.” Jamie bobs her head. “Y’know, these two are practically in love with ya’ already.” She gestures vaguely at Miles and Flora who are flicking dirt at one another playfully. “They were real sore when Rebecca took that apprenticeship with Henry, but...you’re good with ’em.”

Dani remembers Rebecca’s fond smile as she spoke about Miles and Flora during her interview. That lost gaze—pained still, perhaps, from all that Peter Quint business—as she spared no detail in their personalities, their quirks, their excitability. Dani had accepted the job without a moment’s hesitation just based on Rebecca’s insight alone, already half-in-love with her not-yet wards.

There’s a chance she’s reading too much into this interaction, but the fact is, she can’t recall anyone ever looking at her the way Jamie does—so considering, so warm. And they are strangers still, but it’s as if there is nothing hanging in the air between them, no unnecessary weight or expectations, and there has never been another person she’s experienced that with.

“They’re good with me ,” Dani says. “That’s not true for a lot of people.”

A flash of something in Jamie’s eyes. They drop down to Dani’s hands, the black gloves hiding her skin from view. 

“Can’t say I don’t know what that’s like,” Jamie says.

For a moment, Dani is too enthralled by the color of her eyes to respond, or even to fathom the depth of this moment. 

They don’t know each other. Not really. Three days and a few spare moments does not a friendship—or relationship —make.

Dani knows this. She knows this. But a match strikes hot in her chest at the implication of Jamie’s words all the same.

She’s just about to speak, to break the spell when something slams into her knees. 

It’s Flora, breathless and wind-swept, grinning from ear-to-ear. Her hands are dirty, some mud on her knees, but she looks happier than she has since Dani first arrived.

“Miles said I was too slow to finish before him but I did ,” she says. “Isn’t that just perfect?”

“I let you win,” Miles says from behind her, looking just a little put-out.

Flora spins around. “No, you didn’t. I’m just so much faster than you are and—”

Her words spin off towards her brother, colorful and spindly and reaching, their banter is so uncomplicated and so domestic that Dani aches with the loss of a sibling she’d never been given.

Beside her, Jamie gets to her feet, rubbing her hands together like she’s trying to relieve some of the unspoken tension still lingering between them. “I should—” She jerks her thumb over her shoulder in the vague direction of the greenhouse rather than finishing. “See you around, then, Poppins.” She gives Hannah a nod and starts away.

Dani watches her go, watches her disappear around the corner, Flora’s hand wrapped around her finger as she laughs at something Miles has just said.

______________

Dani knows better. She should. She does.

So: she keeps her distance. Spends time with the children. Takes long walks around the grounds during breakfast. Goes to bed early. Gets up late.

The point of all of this is that it’s supposed to help fizzle out whatever might have the audacity to begin brewing. That’s what everyone told her after Eddie’s funeral.

They said: “You need time. That’s all. You just need time .”

And maybe that’s true for Eddie. Maybe there will be a morning when she will wake and she will not feel the bitter taste of regret at the back of her throat, will not imagine the twitch of his bloody hands or the gurgle of each painful breath in those last moments. Maybe one day she’ll stop imagining him in the doorway of her bedroom, stop imagining his hand on her shoulder or waist when she is standing still. 

But time has also brought something else—the idea of someone who might be able to make things more bearable. Who could make each breath a little less sharp .

The trouble is: time has done nothing but make her ache more , long more , for what she’s never quite had.

Worse: assuming that time can fix whatever this is with Jamie is to assume that the yawning thirst for her is finite.

And Dani is starting to believe it may be endless.

______________

One night, a week or so in, Dani drifts through the halls like a ghost, imagining Eddie around every corner. Jamie around every corner. She’s heading to the kitchen so that she can do something with her hands besides imagining them catching Jamie’s wrist, bare and uncovered and her skin turning... something . 

Some color that isn’t black.

She’s nearly there when a figure comes around the corner from the dining room. Not going to the same place. No intention of meeting each other like this. Just chance and Dani stopping in her house slippers on the hardwood floor before they run into one another.

It’s Jamie. Wearing the same clothes she’d been in when Dani had seen her last, in the yard after dinner. Slouched spine, pale forearms poking out from the bunched sleeves of her over shirt, hair a little messy from the length of the day. She is beautiful.

And Dani in her pajamas and house slippers, her robe hanging open and fluttering as she waits for whatever is coming next. She’d only been going to make some tea—or try to anyway.

“Oh,” says Dani, numbed solid under the gaze of this woman who means more than she should already.

“Fancy meetin’ you like this,” Jamie says. Her eyes dance in amusement and she takes a step forward, closer, mouth set in the easy smile of a woman offering up something that Dani isn’t sure she can take. 

“What are you—” Dani starts, but thinks better of it. Readjusts. Says, “I mean...it’s late and you’re not usually—”

Jamie nods. Cuts her off with it. “Right, yeah,” she says. “I’m not. Just...wanted to give Owen and Hannah some time together and cleaned up dinner. That’s all.”

“Oh,” says Dani. “Okay.”

The wall between them—the one that Dani has been trying to build since she first laid eyes on the other woman—rips open and Jamie pours through. There are rules for a reason, and Dani has just forgotten the reason.

Jamie is so close and Dani’s hands quiver. Her breath stutters, and she tries to force herself to calm down, because being alone with her like this is difficult for so many reasons and she can’t name any of them in the moment. She should put an end to this, shouldn’t she?

But then:

What is there to end?

“Sorry, did you need to get through?” Jamie steps to the side of the doorway to give Dani enough room to pass. 

“Oh. Um...yes. Thank you.”

Jamie laughs, a lovely sound. Dani’s breath halts for a second, and then resumes. “You keep saying that,” she says. “You okay, Poppins?”

Dani blinks. “Keep saying what?”

Another laugh. “Oh,” Jamie says, her voice pitched to mimic Dani’s. 

“Oh,” Dani says, but: “Oh, no. I mean...Sorry.”

“No need.” She steps around Dani all the way and starts towards the front door, moving slowly, hands in her pockets. “Goodnight.”

What Dani wants to say is this: please don’t go, I think you’re important, I think you might be it and Ivy was right, you were worth the wait and I don’t know what that means or if that sounds crazy, but please just stay because I really—

She doesn’t say that. Of course she doesn’t.

No. She says, “Wait, um...Jamie?” and spins around to find that Jamie has halted, that she’s looking back at her curiously, interested. Maybe a little longing, but Dani can’t be sure. “I was just about to make some tea. Would you want to...” 

She trails off, unsure as to how to finish the thought without sounding completely pathetic.

Jamie clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “You makin’ it?” she asks and, when Dani nods, she whistles through her teeth. “Alright. But only s’long as we say a prayer first.”

Dani blushes, a giggle slipping through her lips and Jamie looks delighted at the sound. She turns and heads back to the kitchen, smiling a little at the sound of footsteps close behind.

She supposes she was bound to break eventually.

Tonight is as good a night as any.

______________

Jamie—unsurprisingly—is unlike most people Dani has met. Possibly, she is the only person Dani knows that says exactly what she means. There is pull between them as they sit at the kitchen table talking that Dani cannot even begin to comprehend. The air seems to crackle around Jamie as she speaks and she smiles like she truly believes Dani is good company.

“It’s good to have someone like you ’round here,” Jamie tells her, having abandoned Dani’s poor attempt at tea in favor of a bottle of wine shared between them both. “No bullshit. The kids aren’t used to that. I don’t think any of us is. You’re a good influence, Poppins. We’re damned lucky to have you.”

She isn’t quite sure what to make of Jamie: this woman she truly does not know. She is brazen. Bold. Enchanting. And not at all like anything Dani might have expected. 

What frightens her is this: if Jamie is not who she’s meant for, Dani thinks she would rather spend the rest of her days alone.

______________

The next morning. Early.

Dani brings coffee to the greenhouse first thing in the morning and Jamie welcomes her with a grin.

Says, “You Americans and your coffee.”

 Takes a drink. Subtly spits it back out in an attempt to spare Dani’s feelings, but Dani knows.

“That’s okay,” Dani tells her. “Can’t be good at everything, I guess.”

Jamie laughs. “Girl like you was bound to have some kind of flaw.”

Dani blushes. Looks away.

That’s the thing about Jamie: when she looks at Dani, she does not see a widow. She doesn’t see someone to pity or feel sorry for. 

She sees who Dani is without the burden of Eddie’s arm around her shoulders. She sees Dani, young and unfettered and just the slightest bit apprehensive about the idea of belonging to someone else.

______________

That night, Flora and Miles insist on something they call “Story Time.” Hannah seems resigned, Owen delighted, and Jamie exasperated. Dani isn’t sure what to expect.

But it’s darling enough. Dear enough. There is already something innately performative in both children that the whole thing plays directly to their strengths and interests. 

It’s a good night. Dani laughs and Owen slips an arm around Hannah’s shoulder, pulling her nearer, and Jamie throws Dani a look every so often—rolls her eyes or grins cheekily; a wink or two here and there.

And then the phone rings.

______________

A conversation between a governess and a gardener after Owen’s car disappears around the bend in the drive:

“I’m so sorry,” says Dani,” about Owen’s mom. Sorry that—”

“That’s alright,” says Jamie.

“It’s...It isn’t. It’s so terrible to lose someone.”

“Yeah.” A step closer. “It is. But Owen’s got Hannah and...and us. He’s not alone.”

“No. I guess he isn’t.”

A breath. They reach Jamie’s car and look at one another.

“You’re not either, Poppins. I hope you know that.”

Oh.

Another thing: Jamie never needs to guess what Dani is thinking. It’s as if she simply just... knows.

“I do,” says Dani.

They look at each other, both hot with heartache, understanding each other for, perhaps, the first real time.

Dani reaches out and grabs Jamie’s hand, touching her—and if that doesn’t send a frantic spark through her veins—for the first time. 

Sometime during the evening, she must have forgotten about her gloves. She’s almost surprised when she feels only the warmth of Jamie’s skin, rather than the skin itself.

When she looks down, no colors bloom across Jamie’s hand. Dani tells herself there isn’t any reason to be disappointed.

But: it changes something .

Jamie’s eyes light up in understanding and she squeezes Dani’s covered fingers with her own. The moment lasts a breath or two longer until Jamie has to pull away, leaving the cool air to leech back the warmth from Dani’s palm. 

“Who the hell knew?” she asks, opening the door of her truck and getting in.

But Dani knew, didn’t she? Hadn’t she known all along?

And here’s the thing about being alone: real love makes it impossible.

_______________