Archive of Our Own

They are not running away together, exactly. They are moving slowly, carefully, checking the road ahead for obstacles and cracks in the pavement as they go. Slowly, the distance between the pair of them and Bly Manor expands. Slowly, the world stops looking so much like a ghost story. Jamie, more and more every day, thinks, She believed it with her whole heart, but maybe not so much anymore. Maybe not so much. 

Even so, even as the months turn to years, Jamie can’t forget the certainty in Dani’s face that day as she said it. She’s going to take me. The most certain Dani has been about anything except Jamie herself. Though the days are gorgeous, long and lazy, stretching on like there will be millions more ahead, Jamie can’t forget. She’s going to take me. 

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” she murmurs, brushing Dani’s hair back. She’s fallen asleep on the couch again, her head in Jamie’s lap, and though it’s well past midnight, Jamie can’t bring herself to wake her. Moments like this. Moments like this are so many, and so precious, and so much more than how very small they seem. 

Dani thinks the Lady will take her, someday. Jamie thinks Dani knows her own mind better than anyone. In two very different ways, they’re both primed to fight. 

And even still, when it begins, it’s a blind strike to the side of the head. 

***

Dani has lost her key. 

It sounds so small, so nothing. She turns up at the shop an hour after she’s gone home to get dinner started, looking more than a little sheepish. Jamie, wrist-deep in repotting some of the hardier flowers, cocks her head. 

“What’re you doing back? Don’t tell me the apartment caught fire.”

Dani, head bowed, sits behind the counter. “Can’t get in,” she says miserably. “Left the key somewhere.”

Jamie smiles. Dani hates making silly mistakes--she sometimes thinks it’s this vaguely type-A attitude that drew her toward teaching in the first place, toward helping kids not screw up the little things in life. It’s endearing, the rare occasion Dani lets her see a side of error not confined to her tragic inability to make a hot beverage. 

“I’m sure it’s in with the laundry or something,” she says, brushing off her hands and setting aside her trowel. “No worries, I’m just about finished here anyway. You want to pick up tacos on the way?”

No worries. That’s how it feels, as a pouting Dani tucks her arm through Jamie’s bent elbow and follows her out of the shop. People misplace things every day--it’s not like Dani pitched her key down a gutter or something. It’ll turn up.

And, within an hour of arriving home with the best Mexican food suburban Vermont has to offer, it does: under Dani’s purse, dead center of a couch cushion. Jamie produces it with a flourish, dropping to one knee like a knight of old and raising it upon her palms like a magic sword. 

“M’lady,” she drawls. “Your treasure.”

Dani laughs. She plucks the key from Jamie’s hand, tucks it into her hip pocket, pulls Jamie into a giggly kiss--and just like that, the matter is forgotten. A nothing. A moment. 

If she looks a little puzzled, a little irritated with herself, it passes before Jamie can even comment. 

***

The plants in the back are wilting. 

Jamie stands, hands in her pockets, regarding them with some alarm. Shouldn’t be a problem, she thinks, running through the possibilities. Roots should have plenty of space. Lights are working fine. No sign of rot anywhere to be found. They just look a little...

“Dani,” she calls, eyes still on the yellowing leaves. Dani pokes her head through the door, a bundle of roses in her hands.

“Yeah?”

“Have you, uh. Watered these recently?”

She waits for the obvious answer. Dani always waters this side of the room. She takes the left, Jamie takes the right, and everybody gets the nourishment they need. 

When Dani doesn’t answer for a full ten seconds, Jamie turns to her with a frown, surprised to find Dani’s brow furrowed like she’s thinking hard. 

“I...thought I did,” she says slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I must have.”

“How many times this week?” Jamie asks. Dani closes her eyes as if counting. 

“I...” She steps into the room like she’s half-asleep, staring at the plants so hard, it’s a wonder the flowers don’t burst into flame. “Twice? Three times, maybe. Or...”

More than that, Jamie thinks, gently lifting a drooping leaf and inspecting its unhealthy pallor. If she didn't know better, she’d say Dani had watered this poor thing twice a day for the last week. 

“S’okay,” she says, though a faint bloom of annoyance is opening in her chest. “It’s salvageable, I think. Just so long as we let ‘em dry out some. Leave this side to me, okay?”

Dani is staring at the plant nearest to her like she’s never seen one before. Whatever annoyance Jamie feels at having to quite possibly start over with previously-perfect plants vanishes at the sight of her expression. 

“Hey,” she says, taking Dani’s hands and squeezing. “Honestly, Dani, don’t worry about it. These things happen.”

Dani’s frown deepens as if to say not to me, they don’t. Jamie gives her hands a gentle swing from side to side until that frown lightens. 

“Maybe I take care of the watering for a bit, yeah? You can supervise.”

She doesn’t look too closely at any of it, at the way Dani’s brow creases like she’s still trying to keep track of how many days are in the week. She doesn’t look too closely at why she’s just heard herself say “supervise” instead of “keep the books”, as she normally would. Don’t look at it. Dani’s fine. 

Just a little scattered today, is all.

***

“It’s, uh...hang on...”

Dani is scowling at the ceiling, racking her brain for something Jamie can’t help with. There was a woman, a woman in the grocery store, who spoke to Dani as though she’d done it a hundred times. 

“Barb?” Jamie suggests, plucking a name out of thin air. “Carol. Monica.”

Dani shushes her, flapping a hand for silence. Jamie shuts up, her mouth pulling into a relaxed grin she doesn’t quite feel. 

Dani’s been doing this more and more lately--stopping mid-sentence to grope for some detail Jamie can’t see behind her eyes. It shouldn’t worry her. She doesn’t want it to worry her. 

These things just happen, she tells herself, watching Dani bend forward to press her face with frustration against her knees. They’re getting older--have been together almost ten years now--and their lives are busy. Busy brains are easily worn out by an abundance of minor details, and sometimes, the less important stuff slips. It’s okay. It’s nothing to be concerned about.

Except Dani looks like she’s on the verge of tears, scraping around in her head for the name of some woman they ran into in the bread aisle. Dani is dragging deep breaths in that old familiar way that says the trigger is small, but the imminent explosion could take out the whole night.

“Poppins,” Jamie says, prodding at her ribs until she sits up and stares with wet eyes into Jamie’s face. “Is this a woman I’m meant to invite to dinner?”

Dani shakes her head. Jamie shrugs. 

“Then I’m going to go right ahead and call her Honeywheat, and we can just be done with it.”

Dani laughs--not a real laugh, but a huff through her nose to tell Jamie she’s trying. Jamie smooths a thumb across her cheekbone, pretending this hasn’t been happening more and more frequently. Pretending she hasn’t noticed just how badly it pulls at Dani’s threads, each time she loses track of something small. 

“Charlene!” Dani says, half an hour later, practically shouting the word into the silence of the living room. Jamie jumps, losing her place in her book, looks up to find Dani staring at her with a fierce sort of pride that scares her. It’s a look that says I did it, and I’m okay, goddammit, and this is not happening. 

“Charlene, hm?” Jamie repeats. “I think I prefer Honeywheat.”

***

The day of the fire, she has to admit there’s cause for concern. 

She thinks, at first, it’s just her. That she’s had such a long day at the shop, been yelled at by far too many young men who didn’t understand why it’s less than appropriate to give your spouse flowers by way of asking for a divorce, and her brain has been scrambled. It’s the only explanation, she thinks, for smelling smoke the minute she walks into the apartment building. 

Except it gets worse as she heads up the stairs. Worse still, until she’s fitting the key into the lock, opening the door, realizing with a jolt of horror that the smell is both very real and very much coming from the kitchen. 

“Dani?” she calls, and her voice sounds to her own ears like a scream echoing over a moonlit lake. She forces the panic down, forces herself to walk--not run--to the kitchen and survey the damage. 

A plate of something undefinable is sitting in the microwave. It is no longer on fire, she notes, but the microwave is still, as she wrenches it open, counting down. The little green numbers flash 40:03, blinking at her, waiting to resume their cook time. 

“Dani!” she calls again, jamming her thumb into the Clear button and slamming the microwave shut on a wall of acrid smoke. 

“Yeah?” Thank Christ. Dani, poking her head out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around her body. “You’re home! ...what’s that smell?”

“You tell me,” Jamie says, more sharply than she intends; her heart is in her throat, blocking off anything resembling restraint. She staggers toward Dani, whose face is the picture of bemusement. 

“It’s not...coming from our kitchen?”

“Dani.” Jamie takes her by the shoulders, reassured by the soft slide of Dani’s skin against her palms. Real. Here. Okay. “You had something cooking. Did you...”

Forget, she doesn’t say. The color pours out of Dani’s face, answering the question so completely, Jamie sags against her. 

“Threw it in,” Dani says slowly. “Leftovers. Just...”

Jamie thinks she can guess. Threw it in, walked away, forgot it completely. Would have been fine, if that had been all. If Dani had simply spaced on the idea of retrieving the dish before it grew cold, if she’d opted for a shower instead, there would have been no harm done. 

Except that counter was so high. Except Dani had, plainly, set the timer for nearly an hour. 

Dani is looking at the smoke hazing the air, polluting the hall, with an expression of such grim anxiety, Jamie nearly forgets to breathe. Pull it together. She needs you to keep focus. 

“I’m sorry,” Dani says, so softly, Jamie would have missed it if not for staring at Dani’s face like it might slip away at any second. “I don’t know how...”

“It’s okay.” Jamie pulls her close, struggling to keep her heart from pounding out of her chest. So much could have gone wrong. If they hadn’t gotten lucky. If she hadn’t gotten home in time. So much could have-- “It’s okay.”

“Jamie?” Dani’s voice is tiny, her face turned against Jamie’s neck. “I think there’s something wrong with me.”

***

She calls Owen after Dani falls asleep, careful to keep her voice down. France is six hours ahead, and it’s clear her call catches him still in bed, but his voice is cheerful all the same.

“Jamie! Big surprise. How’s everything--”

“How did it start?” Jamie keeps her voice low, her eyes on the hall. She doesn’t like leaving Dani alone in the bedroom, doesn’t like the idea of Dani waking and not knowing where she is. Make it quick, then.

“Sorry?” Owen sounds confused, and rightly so. “How did what start?”

“Your mum.” She can’t think of a cleaner way to approach it, a nice, easy route to opening Owen’s old scars. “How did it start, with her?”

He’s silent for so long, she wonders if the connection has severed. Finally: “Jamie, what’s going on?”

She can’t. She can’t get into it. If she says too much, if she explains what she’s been seeing in drips and drops over the past few years, it might cement the whole thing into reality. She can’t. 

“Please,” she says, hearing her own voice break with exhaustion. “Just tell me.”

***

There are tests. Dani doesn’t want to take them, and Jamie quite frankly doesn’t want to force it, but there are tests all the same. CT scans, and doctors who ask probing questions that grit Dani’s teeth and put fire into her eyes, and Jamie thinks for a hopeful few minutes that this is stupid. That they don’t need to be here. That Dani is okay, and fierce, and strong, and here. 

“I’m not going to say there’s no cause for concern,” the doctor says, when Dani has jumped through all his hoops. “But your scans don’t show much yet, and your grasp on those questions seems strong. Keep an eye on it, all right? Call me if there’s any change.”

He’s looking at Jamie like he knows why she’s here, why she’s standing just a few inches from Dani’s side. She nods once, sharp, and he pats Dani lightly on the shoulder. 

“You’re young,” he says, like youth means anything at all where tragedy is concerned. “I have a good feeling about this.”

***

Jamie starts coming home when Dani does, starts waiting for her to get ready before going into the shop. She can’t help when Dani loses track of details inside her head--the date, their plans for the weekend, a longtime customer’s name--but she can help with other things. With knowing exactly where Dani’s purse is at all times. With knowing exactly where Dani’s favorite earrings are. With knowing exactly when Dani last ate.

“You don’t have to do that,” Dani says in a voice like iron. Jamie raises her head from the salad she’s preparing for lunch. 

“Don’t have to...?”

“Fuss,” Dani says, almost coldly. “I’m fine, Jamie.”

It hits her like a punch, almost doubling her over, the look in Dani’s eyes. Some horribly chilly combination of frustration and anger, maybe not at Jamie, but directed her way all the same. She pauses, setting the cheese grater down, looking Dani in the eye. 

Really? Only, the last time I didn’t set us up with a timely meal, you went ten hours without eating anything and nearly passed out on me.

She doesn’t say the words. Instead, she says, “I love you.” It’s become a mantra in moments like this, when Dani is so not herself, it’s like staring at someone else in a mirror. I love you. I love you on bad days, and I love you when you remember every detail of our first kiss, and I love you tomorrow.

The fight goes out of Dani’s body, her hand cupping around her eyes. The gold of her ring stands out in the afternoon sun, and Jamie thinks, It’s still her. It’s still her. 

“I’m sorry. I just...I feel...”

Jamie moves toward her slowly, like approaching a trapped animal. She's never moved like this with Dani in all the time they’ve been together, never felt the need, but lately, Dani is so unpredictable it hurts. 

“Trapped,” Jamie suggests softly. Dani nods into her hand. “I’ve been hovering.” Dani nods again. “Too much?”

Hesitation. A final nod that is also sort of a shake. Jamie sighs. 

“Just want to make sure I don’t--” Lose you. “--miss out on something important, is all. I’m sorry, too. I can back off some.”

It terrifies her to say so, to promise that when Dani sometimes looks around the living room like it’s brand-new. But Dani’s right. She isn’t a child. She doesn’t need Jamie to treat her as such. She’s okay. She’s still here. 

“I love you,” she says again, and Dani walks into her arms like she’s the only thing in the room not spinning. 

***

She tries not to panic, when Dani doesn’t come home. Tries to will herself back to ancient therapy techniques, to breathing rituals, to steady reminders that Dani is okay. Dani is fine. Dani has had a really good couple of weeks, in fact, and when she told Jamie she wanted to stop off at the store after work, Jamie had agreed. 

An hour passes. Two. Jamie’s pacing, doing fevered mental math: the shop is a ten-minute walk from the apartment, the grocery store a five-minute walk from the shop. How long does it take to pick up eggs, cheese, tomatoes? Half an hour? 

Okay, she thinks, forcing a calming breath through her nose. Okay, so that’s five--fifteen--forty-five minutes...

Not five minutes after this less-than-bracing thought, she’s throwing on a jacket and storming out the door. A fifteen-minute walk to the grocery store, she completes in eight. The cashier is a teenager in an outdated Nirvana t-shirt, looking at her like she’s out of her mind when she blows through the doors and says, “Blonde woman, brown jacket, one blue eye, one brown. Seen her?”

He has not. She forces herself not to sprint through the tiny store, peering doggedly down each aisle in turn. No sign of Dani. 

The shop, then. She makes her way back, cups her hands around her eyes as she leans into the dark window. Door is still locked, and not a light is burning.  Dani wouldn’t shut them off unless she was at the door--no matter what happens, no matter how confused she gets, she never plunges herself into darkness until she’s ready to make an escape into light. 

Breathe, Jamie thinks. Breathe. Maybe she’s just taking a stroll. 

She walks for blocks, her legs carrying her at twice the normal speed, looking around every corner with absolute terror. When she finds Dani at last, seated on a bench outside their favorite Mexican restaurant, the relief almost stops her heart. 

“Dani.”

Miserable eyes turn up to her, Dani’s face shell-shocked. “How long,” she says brokenly, “have we lived here? In this neighborhood.”

Jamie swallows. “Fifteen years.”

Dani nods, like she’s just given a complicated multiplication problem to a student who got it right on the first go. “Fifteen years,” she repeats. “Jamie. I couldn’t. I couldn’t remember--”

Jamie drops down beside her, arms wrapping tight, not caring who might be looking. Dani is so small, hands gripping Jamie’s shoulders, shaking all over. 

“I’ve got you,” Jamie murmurs. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”

***

“It’s her,” Dani says. They’re laying in bed, Jamie’s head on Dani’s chest, Jamie trying desperately not to count all the things that have gone wrong in Dani’s head this week. How Dani stared in confusion at an order she’s put together a hundred times. How Dani snapped at a customer, who looked at her like she’d just stabbed his mother. How Dani had been midway through a joke when she lost track of the punchline, and looked ready to burst into tears. 

“It’s her,” Dani repeats. Jamie raises her head. 

“Dani...”

“It’s. Her.” Dani reaches for her hand, fingers pressing down on the gold band she once hid in a plant. Jamie closes her eyes, inhales. 

“Dani, I don’t want you to--you can’t go thinking--”

“Every day,” Dani says, her eyes on the ceiling. It’s like she thinks looking at Jamie would splinter her self-control. “Every day, I feel it a little less.”

Jamie waits. She’ll go on, eventually, explain herself. Jamie hates cutting her off, hates stepping in the way of a thought, lest Dani never quite get it back again.

“Every day,” she says at last, “we’re here. Living our lives. I see that, I feel...I feel you touching me, I feel how much we...and still, it’s like...like someone’s putting up glass. That fogged-up glass you can only see shapes through, you know? I can see us through it, but every day, that fog gets a little thicker.”

Her voice trembles, her throat working. Jamie shifts until her fingers are threaded with Dani’s, clenching tight. 

“You’re here,” she says, unable to think of anything more reassuring. It’s what she’s been telling herself about Dani for months. Years. That Dani, no matter what else is going on, is still here with her. Still smiling at her. Still whispering her name in the dark. 

“What if I’m not?” Something in Dani’s voice wavers to breaking, a hairline fracture in the words. “What if I’m looking at you, and I...I...”

Jamie can’t breathe. A muscle is jumping under her jaw, straining against the sob she’s been holding back for days. 

“What if I’m looking at you when she takes me,” Dani whispers, and Jamie breaks. Can’t not. She presses her face against Dani’s skin, tears coming hot, and Dani holds fast to her like they both know the ship is going down. 

“I love you,” she says, that same voice Jamie’s been leaning into for almost twenty years. “I love you. I love you. I love--”

***

“How is she?” Owen crosses his legs, sips his beer. Jamie’s own leg is fidgety, sock-clad foot hammering a mad rhythm against the floor. 

“She’s...”

“How is she?” Owen repeats before she can polish off a pretty lie. She shuts her eyes against his too-kind stare.

“Told the same story four times yesterday.”

He’s nodding, sympathetic. “Mum used to get stuck on one about the best dinner she ever made. How she rescued it at the last second from burning. Proudest moment of her life, I think, except for the day I got into culinary school.”

Jamie sighs. “It was about the kids.”

“Ah.” He leans back, surveying her as though looking for cracks. If he finds any, he wisely keeps it to himself. Jamie, bottle still angled toward her lips, leans a little to look down the hall. The bedroom door is shut, no sign of Dani waking.

“I tried to get her to stay up,” she says, wondering why she feels the need to convince Owen, of all people. “She does miss you.”

She doesn’t tell him about the heartbeat of confusion, the way Dani’s brow had knit when Jamie mentioned he was coming into town. How, for a second, Dani had seemed uncertain if she knew Owen from Bly, or from Iowa. 

“There’s always breakfast,” he says, placidly keeping tempo with this song they’re tossing back and forth, the one that goes everything is okay, everything is just fine, so long as we don’t look at it. 

It’s good to be around someone who understands, even if she doesn’t really want to talk about it. Good to know Owen, who is watching her with knowing eyes, remembers all too well what it feels like to watch someone slip away. 

“Seem to remember,” she says, taking the last swig and dropping the bottle against the breakfast bar, “saying once that this was a just shoot me situation. That it wasn’t fair.”

“And now?” He unfolds from his seat, moving in three strides to the fridge to replace her drink. Owen Sharma, at home in any kitchen without even trying. 

“Now,” she sighs, “I don’t care about fair. I don’t care about burdens. I don’t care about anything except making sure she still....she’s still...”

He hands her the bottle, leans his elbows against the counter. There’s an abundance of gray in his hair these days, and contacts in his eyes. He smiles like Owen, though. Always that familiar, warm smile. 

“She’s still your Dani,” he says. It isn’t a question. “Even on the days she isn’t. It’s the hardest part, maybe, remembering that. When she slips up, or can't remember the apartment number, or gets angry because you’ve reminded her of a gap she knows shouldn’t be there. But, Jamie, remember. She is still Dani.”

“I know.” Jamie scuffs a hand under her nose, rubs hard against her wet eyes. “I know. And sometimes she is so Dani. As if she was never anything else.”

As if, she doesn’t add, there wasn’t something else in there with her. Wiping her away a little at a time. Something else, matching her movements. Waiting. 

“To Dani Clayton,” Owen says, raising his bottle and clinking against her own. “Your anchor.”

***

She thinks she’s getting used to it, if this is something one can get used to. Thinks she’s building a rhythm, a routine, around Dani’s bad days. Little jokes work sometimes. Little kisses and touches. Dani responds to Poppins better than her own name now, and Jamie leans into it, trying to pretend that doesn’t tear at her. Trying to pretend she can go back to a time when safety was a nickname, a silly joke on her lips to keep the well of feelings from overwhelming her good sense. 

She says, “Morning, Poppins” and “I love you, Poppins”, and “G’night, Poppins”, like she hasn’t mostly been calling Dani by her real name since the day she admitted just how in love she was. 

Even so, it’s a method of getting by. Dani is still Dani, after all, just as Owen said. Maybe sometimes she thinks it’s 1987, and maybe sometimes she thinks there are ghosts in the mirrors, and maybe sometimes she looks sharply up from a movie with the name “Eddie” harsh on her lips. Sure. Sometimes. But, mostly, she is still Dani. 

Jamie is prepared, most days, for the mood swings and the bewilderment. For finding Dani’s toothbrush in the bedroom, or relocating Dani’s wallet back into her bag. She’s prepared for almost all of it, after so much time. 

Nothing. Nothing can prepare her for the day Dani forgets her name. 

They’re setting about readying for the day--readying themselves for the plane, in fact, which is slated to leave in three hours--and Dani has gone off to the bathroom to shower. She returns in one of Jamie’s softest shirts, her legs bare, her hair dripping. Jamie raises her eyes from last-minute packing, smiling. 

“Nice and clean, then?”

Dani freezes. Turns slowly on her heel. Stares at Jamie like she’s never seen her before. 

Something in Jamie cracks. Something in Jamie, something she didn’t even know could break, splintering wide open. 

“I--who--” Dani, backing up fast, backing toward the door. It’s like she walked into her apartment to find some burglar lurking at the foot of her bed. Her hand extends, warding Jamie off, and Jamie realizes she’s been trying instinctively to move closer. To take Dani into her arms. To remind her. 

“Dani. Poppins. Hey.” Each word, a knife turned back on herself. Each word, a question. She’s never said Dani’s name like this, with so much uncertainty weighed into each letter. “Dani, please.”

It’s the please that really breaks her. The please, like begging Dani for the kindness of her own name on Dani’s lips is something she ever thought she’d need to prepare for. 

Dani blinks. Blinks again. Raises her left hand, stares hard at the band wrapped around her third finger. As Jamie watches, she touches the heart, the hands, the crown. 

“Jamie?”

She’s on her knees, she realizes, on her knees on the floor with her arms wrapped around herself, and Dani is all but running to her. She’s on her knees, sobbing, feeling as though she could not be more wrung out if she’d walked in to find Dani cold on the bed. 

Don’t let me find out, she thinks desperately, please, fuck, don’t ever let me find out how that feels compared to this. 

“Jamie,” Dani says against the top of her head, holding her, “Jamie, hey, shh, come on...”

She doesn’t know, Jamie thinks wildly. She has no idea where she just went. No idea what almost washed away just now. She doesn’t know. 

“Still here,” Jamie rasps through a sob. “You’re still here?”

Dani is silent a moment, and Jamie knows she’s heard it: the question at the end of the sentence, placed there for the very first time. Her hand tucks beneath Jamie’s chin, guiding her face up until her swollen eyes are staring into Dani’s tired ones. 

“Still here,” she says softly. “I promise.”

***

Twenty years. It’s been twenty years, almost to the day, and California is glorious. Vermont is home, and Jamie would never trade it, but there’s just something about California she loves. The air is sweeter, somehow. The people, warmer. Or maybe they just care less. 

Dani holds to her arm like a life preserver as they make their way through people much younger and more aloof than they’ve been in years. Jamie tries to stand taller, tries to look as though she belongs among Flora’s friends. Flora, who barely knows who she is, even--her eyes coasted right over Jamie when she walked up, right past Dani’s smile, the polite disinterest of a stranger. 

It’s different than what she’s been watching with Dani. Different--but no less harsh, in its own quieter way. 

Miles, practically a man now, shakes their hands with undue formality. Henry, just this side of relaxed, kisses her cheek. Embraces Dani. Jamie tries not to notice how her wife goes stiff in his arms, like there’s some part of her that can’t quite put a finger on why he feels entitled to such friendliness. 

“Flora’s uncle,” Jamie whispers against Dani’s hair under the guise of a kiss. Dani nods once to show she understands, smiles at Henry like it’s summer, like it’s ‘87, like she couldn’t forget her past no matter how hard she tried. 

“Lovely to see you both,” Henry says, oblivious to it all. Jamie’s glad she kept this to herself, kept it between Dani and her and Owen. No one else knows Dani here, anyway. No one needs to pry into the battle she’s been waging for two decades. 

The rehearsal dinner is pleasant--everyone drinking a little too much, Flora beaming up at her groom-to-be, Owen telling bad jokes and advising them both to run off to Bali. With Dani’s hand gripping hers on the tablecloth, in full view of the world, Jamie almost feels at home. If she has to lean over from time to time to whisper a name in Dani’s ear, if she has to gently guide Dani to the bathroom, it all feels fitting of an out-of-town wedding. It’s fine. It’s okay. They can do this.

They’re sitting in the parlor of a presumably-haunted wedding venue, Dani leaning out of her chair to hold Jamie’s hand, when Jamie hears herself say it. She hadn’t planned on it in advance. It feels like flirting with fire, somehow, something that might keep them all warm or burn them all down. 

“I have a story,” she says, Dani’s fingers warm around her own. “Well. It isn’t really my story...”

She glances up, catching Dani’s eyes, and for a heartbreaking moment, finds them blank. Dani, looking at her with jaw clenched and brow furrowed, trying to place herself. Trying to ward off the thing still working so hard to take her from all of them. 

“It isn’t my story,” Jamie says again, a question, seeking permission. Dani’s face clears. She smiles. Nods once. 

Jamie leans forward, takes a steadying drink. This may not do anything, she cautions herself. May not matter beyond the scope of a single night, with a room full of strangers waiting on her next words. Tomorrow, Dani might wake and not have the first idea whose bed she is sharing. 

That, Jamie thinks firmly, is tomorrow. 

“The teacher,” she begins, squeezing Dani’s hand, “was, by choice, a solitary young woman...”