Chapter 23
Jamie continues with the preparations for their summer getaway. She hasn’t told Dani their potential location yet; whenever Dani tries to ask, she just grins and says, It’s a secret, with that wry grin of hers that Dani has become so accustomed to in the past years. Often, Dani leans over and presses a kiss to her cheek. Unfortunately, this has not yet gotten Jamie to tell her anything about it.
While Jamie continues planning their vacation, she has also been trying to get in touch with Owen. More and more of their letters are being returned to them with no reply instead of making their way to him, and it has been weeks since they have gotten any letters from him. Jamie isn’t worried; she says that he’s still in mourning and that sometimes such great grief needs the loneliness to begin to heal, but Dani isn’t sure she believes her. Loneliness hadn’t helped with her own grief over Eddie. In point of fact, it made matters worse. But, then, Owen held no guilt over Hannah’s death. Dani had the ghost of her dead best friend hovering around her to remind her of her part for far longer than Eddie himself would have held it against her. In Dani’s experience, it isn’t loneliness that helps with grief but family and purpose. They had been able to be with Owen after his mother; they should still be with him now.
But her own grief – her own dread – looming overhead had prevented her from seeing that.
Just another thing that Dani can lay on the altar of things she has sacrificed to the ghost living in the back of her mind, regardless of whether Viola has asked for them or not. There is so much she has given to her. She wonders, sometimes, if Viola understands that. If she can understand it.
It would be her place to explain it, if she wants, but Dani doesn’t feel like having another conversation with the woman right now. She thinks, perhaps, they do their best when they are still separate and not communicating with each other. She can’t be truly mad at – and certainly can’t care for – a ghost who only exists, who only comes out, when she is tucked away. She cannot be interested.
And yet, she finds that, somewhere, within the deepest pit of her chest, she is.
“I heard that you were looking for me?”
Dani lets out a sigh of relief. When Jamie said that someone on the phone wanted to talk to her, she felt a thrill of terror – the only people she can think of who would possibly want to call her (other than Jamie, who she is with) are her mother or someone from Eddie’s family. There is the potential that one of the Wingraves might call, but this is less likely. Even though they’d seen them over Christmas, Dani knows that she will likely not see Miles or Flora again for a long time. Henry is protective of them, as he should be, and spending time with Dani and Jamie only makes them remember Bly.
No one should have to remember Bly. (Let the adults bear the weight of that. Let what happened fade so thoroughly in the children’s minds that they forget it entirely, that they only remember her by name as someone who might be a friend. And yet, she almost cannot imagine any of them forgetting. She hopes, but she does not expect.)
“Owen,” Dani says, finally, wrapping the phone cord around her pointer finger. “Where have you been? We keep sending you letters, and they keep getting sent right back to us.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t been getting my letters.” Owen’s voice is a little gruffer than she remembers it being, and she imagines him pursing his lips and sticking his free hand in his pocket. “I have been sending letters.”
“We’ve been getting postcards.” Dani reaches across the kitchen counter and drags the latest one over. “This one’s from somewhere in India?”
“Ah.” Owen is silent for a few moments. He must be nodding, stroking his moustache. “I was there last month. I’m in Paris now.”
Dani pulls a pad of paper and a pen over. “What’s your new address? We’ll send you something. Hopefully you’ll get this one.”
“I gave Jamie my address earlier,” he says as Dani uncaps the pen. “How have you been? How is….” He hesitates, and his voice grows soft. “How are things with your ghost? Jamie says you don’t want to talk about it, and if you don’t, well enough. But figured I’d be a good friend and ask.”
“No, no, you’re fine for asking.” Dani presses her lips together, considering, and as she does, she begins to doodle, running the pen in little loops along the top piece of paper. “It’s better,” she says, finally. “She’s better.”
“Any progress? Any more notes?”
Dani sighs. “Next time you see me, maybe I’ll let you read one.” She curls the cord tighter about her finger. “Do you remember any of the gravestones at Bly?” she asks, nonchalant. She doesn’t plan to visit the manor if she doesn’t have to – not now, not any time in the future. It still looms too large in her mind for her to want to go back. But if someone else remembers, that’s something.
There is silence on the other end, and Dani is afraid that she has poked a finger into a wound that is still healing. Not just because Owen appears to still be mourning Hannah and bringing up Bly might make him think of her, but because the gravestones had been just outside the church or in the flooring beneath it. The chapel had been Hannah’s territory.
“Sorry,” Dani says almost immediately after asking. “That wasn’t fair of me. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I just don’t remember.” Owen laughs the slightest bit. “My mind was usually on other things. Hannah’s the person you would have wanted to ask.”
Dani sighs again. She shouldn’t have asked. Even if the wound is steadily growing closed, its scab is still just that – a scab. It hasn’t scared, it hasn’t….
Well, how can she think that Owen’s wound should be healed when her own hasn’t? Its scab is thin and easily broken, and it feels like every time Viola rears her head, the cut reopens. By now, it should be infected. Maybe that, too, is what Viola is. Perhaps she is the wound itself, still oozing and bleeding, but slowly healing. Maybe that’s what her memories mean – healing.
“Why do you ask?” Owen asks, breaking through her thoughts.
Dani shakes her head, even though he can’t see it over the phone. “There are a few names written in the front of the plays Flora and Miles gave me. I’m trying to track them down. I thought one of them was on one of the headstones, but I wasn’t sure.” She winces. “I don’t want to go back and see.”
Her gaze returns briefly to Jamie, who is sitting on their couch, one leg tucked under herself, watching her curiously. She has to be listening in – Dani knows she is because she listens in on Jamie’s phone calls, too. Not that they have phone calls all that often. They have a handful of friendly acquaintances around town, but most of the time when someone calls it is for them to watch their house or for advice on their plants – or because she has checked a book out of the library and forgotten to return it. (This last one has happened more often than she would like to admit.)
But still – one of Jamie’s brows rises as she overhears what Dani is saying. Dani covers the mouthpiece on the phone and stares at her. “We’re not going back to Bly.”
“I didn’t suggest we go back, Poppins. Just thought it was weird you were talking about it.”
Dani’s eyes narrow – not quite a glare, not quite a stare – and she shakes her head before removing her hand from the mouthpiece. “Sorry about that. Jamie had a question.”
“I would have some questions, too, but I’m not going to ask them.”
Dani smiles and decides that now would be an appropriate time to change the subject. “Are you thinking about staying in Paris for a while?”
“I don’t know,” Owen admits. “I love Paris, and I would love to stay in Paris. It was my greatest dream, moving back here and starting my own restaurant with Hannah. We would have taken the world by storm, you know.”
“I know.” Dani can’t help the soft expression coming across her face, even though she knows Owen can’t see it. “We were hoping that over Christmas we might visit you, instead of the other way around. Family should be with each other for the holidays, and—”
“—you’re all the family I’ve got left?” Owen finishes with a little chuckle. “Dani, I’m not sure that—”
“No, we’re the only family Jamie’s got,” Dani corrects, and she meets Jamie’s eyes as though checking to make sure that her words are correct. Jamie’s eyes widen the slightest bit, but she gives a little nod of agreement. As much as they might not wish for it, the statement is still true. “Me and you. We’re her family. What’s left of it. We should be together for the holidays.”
Owen lets out a sigh with a soft “Ah, I see.” He takes a moment, likely stroking his moustache in contemplation. “Never really thought about Jamie as my little sister, but I can see it now.” There’s another moment, and Dani hopes that he is smiling. “Alright, then,” he says finally. “We’ll meet up over Christmas. I’ll call ahead so that you know wherever it is I’m going, if I’m not here, but—” His voice fades out.
“I hope you do stay in Paris,” Dani makes out. “Having a stable place with friends can help with everything, even if those friends don’t know anything about what has happened. It’s….” She sighs and pushes her hair back out of her face. “After Eddie, that’s what Bly was. Being with all of you. It was nice. I almost wish I had gotten there sooner. Maybe, if I had—”
“Don’t think about that. Things could have been worse just as easily as they could have been better.”
And yet Dani can’t stop herself from thinking it, not the first time she had – Maybe if I had been there sooner, Hannah would not have died. It is an empty wish, an empty thought. She can’t saddle herself with the weight of two deaths. One had been more than enough, and Hannah….
Hannah wasn’t her fault. Hannah wasn’t the fault of anyone left living. Not even Miles.
“What I’m saying is that you might feel better if you settled somewhere and made some friends. It helps,” Dani says, voice firm. “Really, it does. I wouldn’t be saying it if it didn’t.”
Of course, Dani leaves out that it had taken her six months before applying to the position at Bly and longer still traveling Europe before that. Eddie had been dead even longer before she had made it to Europe; she had been teaching when his death occurred, and she’d finished out the school year out of an odd sense of obligation to her kids. They told her she didn’t have to stay, but the distraction had been…nice. It had been easier to avoid mirrors there. But she couldn’t stay there, not with the way that everyone treated her, not with the way she was treating herself – she had to go. She had to wander.
It feels like that is what Owen is doing now.
“Thanks for the advice, Dani. I’ll keep that in mind.”