Chapter 32
You are left in silence.
You spend the time of your days sitting in that space right behind your host’s eyes, knowing that it makes her uncomfortable, knowing that she doesn’t like it, but believing that you have no other option in terms of learning what is going on. Even Jamie has not been meeting with you, although you do not know if this is because of her conversations with your host or because she is simply exhausted. Your host has never been comfortable with your meetings, so you do not understand why her current discomfort should change things.
You have tried to give her privacy after your fight with her – more her fight with you, as you do not—
No, you do hold things against her. Just because she knows more about her current “modern” world does not mean she is better equipped to deal with everything in every situation. There are things you know more about than she does. Dealing with pampered elitists, such as Rafael and Luisa’s father seemed to be, is one of them. You’d spent your entire life dealing with men like that. They don’t change just because the world is more modern now.
Dani refuses to believe you, and you cannot point to specifics in your own life to convince her because there is so much of your own life that you do not remember. General things? Feelings? What the youths may call vibes? Yes. Those you have in abundance. But actual specific memories? Less than you want.
You have remembered your daughter playing hide and seek, and that returned to you her image, her name.
Isabel. A small girl, smaller than you were at her age, but full of light and brightness despite the unfortunate reality of her situation – a mother suffering from a fatal illness who refuses to die (and likely should have been dead long ago), a father who doesn’t understand how to manage a manor such as they have (that was always meant to be your realm; you don’t know how you know that, but you do), and an aunt who keeps trying to weasel her way into places where she should never have tried to belong (this, too, you believe is your fault as well, although you can’t say just why or how).
Dark hair, like her mother’s. Bright eyes, like her father’s. She looked so much like what you remember of him, and yet you can pick out your father’s features in her as well.
You cannot share this with Dani. There hasn’t been time, what with everything that happened with the children and preparing to meet their father, and now she is refusing to speak with you at all. You haven’t shared this with Jamie, either, as she hasn’t been meeting with you.
Perhaps this is something just for you – a gift to hold to your chest and keep you warm with something that isn’t the indescribable anger that still seems to be building.
Your memories of your daughter are a bulwark against the frustrations of your host.
She cannot cast you out, and you refuse to leave. You could, if you so chose. But where would you go? Back to the manor? Away from the children who clearly need your help? Alone, as you have been for so many centuries?
No.
No, you refuse.
And that stubborn refusal bubbles in your chest alongside your seemingly endless rage, two halves of the same whole, one a mere corruption of the other, mixed with the hope that should be so good and right and true and still continues to be denied.
“You should talk with her.”
“I’m not talking with an abuser, Jamie,” Dani hisses, not even looking up from the cookie dough she’s rolling out on their counter. “There’s no point. She’s just going to keep doing what she’s been doing, and my talking just makes me feel better. And then she’ll overstep my boundaries again, and I’ll be the one apologizing.” She thwacks the dough with the rolling pin and takes a deep breath, still staring at it. The specks of cinnamon poke through the more cream and tan dough. It’s easier to focus on that than it is to try and focus on Jamie right now.
Jamie yawns, covering her mouth with one hand. “I think if she wanted to permanently take you over, she could’ve done it before now.” She rips a piece of cookie dough off of the part Dani has rolled thin and pops it in her mouth. “Don’t think she wants that.”
“She could change her mind.” Dani thwacks Jamie’s wandering fingers with the rolling pin. “She already did once.”
Jamie waves her hand in the air. “Ouch ouch ouch!” She sticks her fingers in her mouth and speaks around them: “You didn’t have to do that.”
“You shouldn’t steal cookie dough.” Dani points to the bowl. “There’s some right there for you.”
Jamie pouts. “More fun if I steal it from you. Reminds me of foster care. Only ever got cookie dough when I managed to pinch a piece." She sighs. “And if she really changed her mind, I’d be talking to her right now.” She pokes Dani’s side. “Don’t think I’m talking to her right now, am I?”
“Would you even know?”
Dani still doesn’t look up. It’s easier to focus on rolling out the cookie dough again and again. Eventually, she presses it so thin that it starts to rip. Then she balls it up and starts to roll it out again. She isn’t sure that she even wants to make the cookies, just keeping rolling out the dough – over and over and over. (Bread might have been a better option for this, pressing and pressing and whacking it against the counter again and again, but she has never been much good at making bread. She will have to ask Owen about that the next time they see him.)
Jamie moves closer to her – she can see her just out of the corner of her eye – and she seems to hesitate before deciding not to move any closer, instead grabbing an apple and biting into it. “’Course I would know.” She shakes her head. “Viola’s all prissy and pompous, and she’s got that weird formal way of speaking.” Then she shivers and makes a disgusted expression. “Her pretending to be you is disgusting.”
Dani knows that feeling. She doesn’t have to look up to meet Jamie’s eyes – doesn’t want to look up to meet them. The very idea of Viola pretending to be her around anyone, especially around Jamie, makes her stomach churn. But Viola has never done that, never really pretended to be her.
She had yesterday, with Emilio and the children.
Dani shivers again.
Jamie places a hand on her back. “Poppins. I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Viola doesn’t want to be you. She wants to be herself, even if she don’t quite get who that is.”
“Who that is is a rage filled monster who lived at the bottom of a lake for centuries and occasionally popped up to kill people. Sometimes children.”
Jamie sighs. “We’ve been through this, Poppins. That’s not who Viola is. That’s who she became when she forgot everything. But she’s remembering things now, right?” She taps her head. “The more a person has a hold of themselves, the less likely they become a monster. Unless they were always a monster.”
“Like Peter Quint,” Dani says at the same moment Jamie says it. She can’t imagine the sort of creature Quint would have become if he’d been a ghost for centuries in the same manner that Viola had, forgetting himself until there was only that desire for…for what? What had Peter wanted?
It doesn’t matter. He’s dead and gone and gone. She doesn’t have to worry about him. She doesn’t have to care about him.
She does, however, have to worry about Viola.
“When Viola was alive, she had a body. She could talk with people. She could be herself. She doesn’t have the option for any of that now, unless she takes me over, and just because we’ve started….” Dani takes a deep breath. “I don’t want to become the secondary person here, only let out when she decides she wants me out.”
“That’s what you’re doing to her.”
“It’s my body.” Dani grits her teeth together. “You don’t understand. You can’t. Not unless you take her yourself, you won’t understand any of this.”
“So let me take her, then.” Jamie tosses the finished apple core into the trash and props her hands on her waist. “Let me take your ghostie for a little bit. See how I like it. Then you don’t have to deal with her anymore. Viola and me, we get along real well, don’t we, ghostie?”
There’s no answer.
Dani knows better than to believe that means the ghost isn’t paying attention – she can feel Viola sitting right in the bridge of her nose, seeing everything through her eyes. Their voices might be muffled, but paying attention, she can hear – just the same way Dani could when she sat back there, seeing someone speaking with Viola. If the ghost wants to answer, she can. She is just choosing not to. Whether that is to see how Dani will respond or because she would rather not is yet to be seen.
“You can’t just take her,” Dani says, hesitantly. “I don’t think it works that way.” She presses her lips together, holding the rolling pin in both hands, but not rolling forward, not doing anything, just staring at the dough and the specks of cinnamon within it. Her eyes search the dough – not really focusing on it, just her mind processing, thinking. “And I don’t….”
Dani shakes her head. “Housing Viola isn’t what you think it is, Jamie, and the kids….” She sighs. “They expect me to be her. They expect her, not me. If you take her, it’ll feel….” Her voice fades away.
“Sounds like you’re more upset about these kids wanting her instead of you,” Jamie says. She wraps an arm around Dani’s waist and rests her head on her shoulder. “You know that I’ll always want you. Ghostie smells weird. All that time soaking in the lake. She stinks of fish.”
Dani laughs and turns just enough to press a small kiss to Jamie’s cheek. “You can’t take her. I’ve got to keep her. Thanks for the offer, though. I would love to get rid of her.” She sighs. “Guess I have to live with her. I don’t really want to.”
“So lay down some ground rules. This is when you can force possess me or something like that.” Jamie mimics her, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Ghostie should be reasonable. She’s always been reasonable with me.”
“Then maybe you should lay down the ground rules. She listens to you.”
“Mmmmm.” Jamie snuggles against her. “I think you should be the one talking with her. She’d listen to you, too, if you spent more time with her. Think of it like training a dog. They listen to the people who train them.”
Dani glances over to her. “I’m pretty sure I remember that she doesn’t like being referred to as a dog, and she doesn’t like being leashed.”
“’Course she doesn’t. Nobody likes being called a dog. Puppy, maybe. Puppies are cute. People like puppies. Call someone a dog, though, and that’s a bit derogative. Bitch, though. There can be some good in bitch.” Jamie reaches around Dani, fingers curling around the edge of the dough.
Dani smacks her with the rolling pin again. “I told you to quit doing that.”
Jamie jumps back from her and licks the dough from her finger, proceeding to pout as she does so. “And I told you it’s much more fun to steal it than it is to just lick a bowl clean. I’m not a dog either, you know.”
“I never said you were a—” Dani sighs in exasperation and shakes her head. “I’m starting to think you don’t even want cookies. You just want the dough.”
Jamie shrugs. “Think you just wanted something you could smack with that pin there.”
“That’s not….”
“Don’t lie to me, Poppins.”
Dani presses her lips together and finally nods. “Alright, it’s true, but you didn’t hear me say it.”
“Definitely didn’t.” Jamie steps closer – hesitant, as though afraid of being bitten. “But if you’re done with thwacking the shit out of that thing, and we know I want the dough, maybe we just…don’t make the cookies. Dough’s better anyway, ain’t it?”
“I’m not sure about that.” But Dani can’t stop herself from smiling. She glances down at the rolling pin and tosses it into the sink. She hasn’t even pulled out cookie cutters. “Fine,” she says, looking back up and finally meeting Jamie’s eyes. “We can just eat the dough.” She points a finger at her. “But if either of us get salmonella—”
“That’s not as big of a risk as people always say it is.” Jamie rolls her eyes. “I mean, how many times did you hear people tell you not to eat cookie dough, and then how many times did you eat it anyway, and how many times did it actually make you sick?”
Dani nods, lips still pressed together. “You make a good point.” She starts to gather the dough up to put it in the bowl, but Jamie stops her. She looks up. “What?” she asks. “Something wrong?”
“You don’t listen, Poppins. Told you it’s more fun to steal it.”
“You’re not stealing it if I’m not doing anything with it,” Dani replies, eyes narrowing. “I’m giving it to you. For free. You can take it.”
“Oh, that’s no fun.”
Dani laughs. “You didn’t think this through, did you?”
Jamie pauses, and then a grin – wicked and bright – spreads across her lips. “Definitely thought this through.” She takes a handful of flour from their nearby container and throws it at Dani’s face.
Dani’s mouth drops open. Her eyes grow wide. “You…you didn’t.”
“Pretty sure I did, Poppins.” Jamie props one hand on her hip and stares at her. “What are you going to do about it?”
“Well, first, I’m going to move the dough out of the way because if it gets more flour it’s just not going to taste any good and I did not waste all that time making this for you to waste it because you want a childish flour fight—”
Another handful of flour hits Dani’s back as she lifts the dough and places it in the bowl. She covers it with plastic wrap, sneaks it into the refrigerator, and then shoots a glare at Jamie. “Oh, it is on.”
You haven’t said anything, but you continue to look out of Dani’s eyes as she and Jamie continue their flour fight. It seems childish to you. But not in an inferior sort of way that you’ve heard in your host’s tone when she says something is childish. You don’t consider yourself better for not being involved; in fact, a part of you would love to take part in such a small thing, to throw flour at your partner or a friend (or your daughter, who you can imagine would have loved this sort of thing, if you had ever been well enough to play with her in this manner). You would love to snatch a bit of cookie dough from that meant to make cookies; you would love to learn how to bake, something you think you likely didn’t learn during your lifetime. You long to taste something like it on the tip of your tongue again. You still do not eat when you have control of your host’s body, although you do drink your tea.
There are things that your host eats that you know did not exist in your time – or if they did, then they certainly didn’t exist where you were – and you would love to taste them, too, to know your own preferences. Your likes, your dislikes. It’s the same sort of longing that makes you ache for clothes of your own, for a life of your own.
Your host would be afraid of this desire, if she knew of it. Truth is, she’s guessed at it in part – that longing to be your own person, to live your own life – although her guessing is built from the fear that you will harvest her life to live your own. But you had your chance to live. You do not intend to steal hers, even if she has agreed to share it with you.
You move away from the dark void between her eyes and follow the path back to your half of the gate.
The idea that Jamie proposed – that she should take you and leave your current host as her own person – is definitely tempting. Dani’s objections are sound, but you cannot imagine that she will be teaching Rafael forever. Perhaps not even longer than a few months. And when she is finished with that, what then?
Perhaps your burden would be best if it were split among them. Perhaps you would get along much better with Jamie than you do with Dani.
But what if moving into a new person means forgetting what you have gained? Are you even able to switch bodies from one person to another? You think it’s possible that you could, if you so desired, if someone asked for you.
Still.
You think, if you are to move, then it would be best to wait for someone who truly wants you with them, not someone just taking you in to cover for someone they actually do care for. You want someone who wants you for you.
You are not sure that you will ever find that.