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The house is a bit weird, Jamie thinks when she starts. Bit weird, but it works.
Doors and windows have a way of shutting on you when you need them, or even when you don’t. Spots are always cold in the summer, always warm in the winter. The fireplace lights on its own. There’s always muddy footprints leading somewhere. Some days, Jamie swears she can hear the pictures on the walls talking to one another.
Most importantly, maybe most relevantly, Jamie and Bly’s plants have got a thing. They like to move to her. Twist around, open and close their buds, the leaves waving in the morning like they’re saying hi. Ivy climbs up the brick molding like it’s on its own personal mission and roses perk to life when she walks by. Maybe weirder, they talk. Good morning, human. How are you, human. Food please, human. Jamie’s pretty sure she’s the only one who can hear them. Just like she’s pretty sure she’s the only one who can stick her fingers in the dirt of a pot and get a seedling to sprout like that.
After a year or so, Jamie gets used to it. It’s Bly. It’s a bit odd. Bit of a weirdo. After four years she doesn’t even question it anymore.
Part of the reason Dani Clayton fits right in, she thinks, is that. Dani Clayton, bit of a weirdo herself. Dani Clayton with the three duffel bags that seem to contain multitudes, Dani Clayton who can make a mop work literally just by looking at it, Dani Clayton with her sunny smile and bloody American voice and blonde hair who sweeps in and fits into their lives at Bly like she was made to be there.
Even Viola likes Dani, which is saying something. Viola hates everyone.
“Dinner, you mangy lot!” Owen calls from the kitchen, and Jamie can hear the children come stampeding down the stairs, followed at a decent clip by Dani, holding a stuffed parrot in one hand and a weird looking feather in the other. Jamie raises an eyebrow.
“We were playing a game,” Dani offers and Jamie nods. Like she knows what that means.
In the kitchen, Hannah is sat at the table drinking tea, across from Viola who is studiously doing the sudoku puzzle from the day’s paper. At the pitter-patter of the children’s feet, she looks up, coughing wetly. Viola’s usually got something stuck in her throat, be it mud or compliments on Jamie’s truly gorgeous garden.
“Owen! Owen!” The wee ones cheer, tugging at his apron as he carries a roast to the table. Jamie takes a seat next to Hannah and immediately reaches for the wine when Dani settles in next to her, the sweet smell of her perfume (what is it? Hazelnut? Camellias? Bloody bubblegum?) making Jamie more than a little light-headed.
“Careful, you lot, this is a first-rate supper here. Wouldn’t want us on the floor, chasing after all the esca-peas.” Collectively the table groans. Flora is the only one to laugh.
“Owen, Miss Clayton took us on the most perfectly splendid adventure today! We went to a jungle and saw lots of beautiful flowers! And there was a bird named Phil and he spoke to us about inter… inter…” Flora stumbles in her retelling.
“International piracy laws,” Miles adds helpfully, and Flora beams.
“Yes, indeed. And it was all perfectly splendid!”
Jamie leans into Dani a little. “That stuffed parrot named Phil, perhaps?”
Dani’s smile is maybe the cheekiest Jamie has seen on her yet. “Perhaps. You know, if you ever needed a tutorial in international piracy laws…”
Viola clears her throat again across the table. “Dreadfully sorry, quite stuffed up today.” she mutters, turning the paper to the crossword. “Does anyone happen to know the first name of a gentleman Van Halen?”
“Eddie,” Jamie offers up, shoveling potatoes into her mouth. Next to her she almost sees Dani flinch but doesn’t think too much about it. It’s been a long day. With autumn coming, it’s a lot of long days regularly. Replanting, digging, pruning, clipping leaves and watering and watching the growth of new life. Not that she tires of it. Well, maybe her back muscles, but not really anything else. And anyway, Owen’s cooking chases away the worst of the aches and pains.
“Where are you going, Owen?” Flora sounds sad, the way she gets when her little family isn’t all together. Flora’s very particular about these things. Owen, drying his hands on a dish towel, looks up.
“Why, home of course.” Owen drops his towel on Flora’s head, making her giggle and Hannah click her tongue. “After all, I should prepare dinner for my mum. She gets awfully full of sass-paragus if I’m not home in time.” And once more, groans, except from Flora who giggles brightly and Dani, who offers a little compensating snort. Owen stands up, hands on his hips. “Now, now. If that’s the kind of reception I get around here I might as well just spend the rest of the weekend at my mum’s place.”
Hannah sighs around her cup of tea. “Honestly, this man. We don’t laugh at his jokes-”
“His horrible jokes,” Jamie cuts in with a smirk.
“And he thinks we’ve tired of him,” Hannah finishes off with a small smile aimed in Owen’s direction. He places a hand over his heart and smiles back at her, and Viola makes a choking noise that could either be taking the piss out of them or genuinely because she’s got silt stuck up in there. Living in a lake really does wreck the lungs, as she likes to remind them.
Once Owen’s swept out the door, his little blue car toddling down the driveway, Viola glances up from her paper at Hannah. “You couldn’t do something about the poor boy’s mother, do you think?”
A heavy look takes over Hannah’s eyes. The kids, knowing this conversation is not for them, eat their food and subtly attempt to attack each other with creamed potatoes. Jamie stays quiet, keeps an eye on Dani, who may be experiencing this kind of conversation for the first time.
Hannah takes in a long breath. “I’m honestly not sure. Her mind is… well, I’m sorely afraid it’s slipping from us all. I’m not certain any one of us has the strength to pull it back.”
Something significant is behind Viola’s stormy brown eyes. “Surely if anyone, it would be you to know how.”
“Surely,” Hannah responds. Jamie clears her throat, downs the rest of her wine glass. This, these moments when Viola and Hannah go into half-logical conversations, are the moments Jamie feels the most on edge at Bly anymore. They’ve known each other a long time, Viola and Hannah. Maybe not long enough that Viola was alive and breathing, but certainly enough that they have experience and long enough Jamie probably wasn’t born when they met. Hannah’s talent for lighting candles and lighting life into others is well known to all of them, but Jamie suspects that Viola knows it a little better than most.
“Did either of you clean up your rooms yet?” Dani cuts in, catching Jamie’s eye with a wink. Miles and Flora both shake their heads eagerly, and Jamie marvels. This woman can make cleaning up a game to them. “Well, why don’t you run upstairs and do that, then. And I’ll be up soon to check on you both before bed.” The kids take their dishes to the sink like dutiful little soldiers and race each other upstairs, and Dani leans into Jamie just the slightest bit.
“It’s this thing I taught them,” she says. “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun.”
Jamie makes a face. “Nice sentiment, but… honestly, Poppins, did it have to rhyme? Or blatantly steal from a Disney movie?”
Dani sticks her tongue between her teeth, clearly fighting a smile. “What? That’s where I get all my best material.”
And if Viola clears he throat once again – definitely intentionally this time – to interrupt them, well, Jamie can strangle her later. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.
---
Jamie works with the plants best, and she knows that. She can tolerate people, can stomach them. Can even like them, if given enough time. But when it’s time to get hands dirty, to get down into it and work, she knows the greenhouse is where she thrives.
So post-dinner, she retreats. It isn’t time to go home yet, not until her notebook-paper list has been all crossed off and her tasks are done and she’s said goodbye to each leafy green individually. They like when she gives them attention.
The sun is set and the moonlight hits the greenhouse in disparate columns, highlighting an orchid bloom here, the leaf of a fern there. Jamie waters and lets the running water soothe her, breathes deep: this is the closest she gets to meditation, here among the plants.
Good evening, says the potted tree sproutling whose voice, to Jamie, has always sounded a little like Viola, throaty and sardonic. Food day?
“Jus’ gave you fertilizer yesterday, bud,” Jamie says, stripping off her gloves and leaning in to rub the dirt with her fingers. “Feeling a bit dry. You thirsty?”
Yes, water, please. It’s not just the chorus of toddler-voiced cacti that talk to her like someone without a solid grasp on vocabulary. It makes it cement somehow, that these plants are Jamie’s babies and she’s the one meant to take care of them.
She gives each plant the attention it deserves, going around the room, checking up on the ones that stay inside, the flower arrangements that should be taken into the house for tomorrow, the plants that she’ll move out to the statue garden when they flower. The meticulously maintained ivy that crawls up the trellises tickles at her face, and she frowns. “What’s that, then?”
“Talking to your plants, now?” Dani is behind her, with a smile this close to a smirk. She lingers in the doorway, leaning a shoulder on it while her arms fall to her sides. The moonlight shines through her hair, makes her look a little more than magical. Jamie forces down a grin and narrows her eyes.
“Trying to get my attention, they were. Bet they like you more than me.”
“I doubt it.” Dani wanders in, dragging her fingers lightly against the side of a clay pot. “But… I don’t talk to them.”
“Sometimes they talk back,” Jamie offers, hears a chorus of titters in her head like the godforsaken plants are laughing at her. Probably the morning glories, the bastards. “Offer me advice, you know. Beg to be fed. Little like your job, in fact.”
“I doubt they grab at your skirt while you’re on the phone with your mother.” Dani relaxes against the main potting counter, crossing her arms lightly and using her fingers to tug at the fabric. Jamie knows it’s more than a little cold in here and she blames it on Bly weirdness. Pushing them in for body warmth and the like.
“The plants could surprise you.” A sad little hosta, it’s leaves dropping, the lowest moaning sounds escaping from it. Jamie scoops it into her arms, carries it to the counter. “S’cuse me a minute.” Dani scoots to the side to allow her to heft the plant up.
This one: nameless. Jamie doesn’t name all her plants, mostly calls them nicknames of their kind, but this poor guy has been sickly since she planted it and she didn’t want to get too attached too quickly. She clicks her tongue, examining the pot. “What’s wrong with it?” Dani asks, fingering the leaves.
“Dunno. Let me…” Jamie wiggles her fingers in the dirt, feeling around for roots. She feels them gently, listening. The low moaning doesn’t get any quieter, but the dirt is dry and the energy is low and… yes. “Think it needs more sun. Bit of fertilizer and some extra care.” She flexes her hand in the dirt, and the hosta seems to perk right up, reaching towards her like she’s the sun itself. She hefts it up under one arm and carries it to a low shelf that gets a little more light.
“You have a talent with those,” Dani says lowly. “And you grew all these yourself?”
“Since I got here,” Jamie confirms. “Bout... four years ago, now.”
Dani’s smile is making its way into her face, light and easy. “And you’ve always been a gardener?”
Tricky things, tricky tricky questions to answer. “I’ve always liked plants. The gardening grew up out of a time when I didn’t have much else to do.” Dani nods, evidently satisfied. Maybe another night. Maybe another time.
“I can understand that.” Dani chuckles, steps a little closer to Jamie. Body heat, she reminds herself, which, it’s working. “I became a teacher because I wanted to help kids but… there also wasn’t much else for me to do.” Perhaps now, tonight, then.
“And you became a nanny…?”
“Because I’m good at it.” Dani smiles simply. “And it takes me places I couldn’t go on my own.”
Jamie sighs. Purses her lips. “Travel. The delight of many.” Dani snorts. “I like roots, me. Like to settle in one place and find where I belong. In the dirt.”
“You belong in the dirt?”
“Often, that is what I find, yes.” Dani’s grin is so wide.
“Maybe that’s why there’s dirt on your cheek?” And there it is. Jamie scrubs at her skin with her sleeve and jostles Dani’s shoulder.
“Cruel, that. Couldn’t have mentioned it earlier?”
“I wanted to see you squirm.”
---
Dani’s got ulterior motives as well, it seems, beyond sugar-light flirtation with Jamie and teasing for the dirt that sticks to her skin like it’s a glue trap. There’s a crack in the molding in the kitchen, just above the fireplace. Jamie, as all around handyman, is to fix it with sealing and plaster and paint. She gathers her tools first thing in the morning.
Inside the house is warmer than outside even though the place hasn’t been properly insulated since the forties. Inside the house is also empty. The place is like a labyrinth, the only clear bits being the kitchen and the foyer, and the rest a maze of complicated wooden tunnels with fancy wallpaper. Jamie does her best to stay out of the back of the house, with its dark corners and drafty corridors and probably endless ghosts. Sticks to the front hallway, the kitchen, the top of the stairs that lead to the kids’ rooms and the one guest room Hannah has unceremoniously labeled as hers even though she hardly ever stays the night. The house is even emptier at night.
Six people – Jamie included – don’t make a lot of noise when they’ve all gone their separate ways, and the most she hears is a rattling from the oversized pantry where Owen is doubtless reorganizing everything again. The hallways stretch onward and she ducks into the kitchen where at least there’s light. Signs of life outside this yawning cave of timelessness. And there’s a product of its timelessness, sitting right there at the table.
Viola is cross-legged in a chair, one of her soaking wet nightgowns dripping over her knees. She’s paging through a thin ledger-looking thing with bony white fingers and she doesn’t look up when Jamie walks in. “Hello, Jamie.”
“Alright, Viola?” Bly’s resident lake poltergeist tends to appear mostly at night, when the sun goes down and the stark lack of color in her skin is less obvious. But if Jamie were doomed to lay at the bottom of a pond for all eternity, she’d probably get up and wander a bit too.
She drags the stepladder out of the belly of the giant fireplace and gets to work, slathering spackle on the wall and smoothing over the crack. She can feel Viola’s eyes at her back, though she doesn’t speak.
Jamie uses a clay-stained knife to score the wall where the brick pattern had been, careful to maintain the house’s charm, as benevolent Lord Wingrave would say were he ever here to check up on the damn place. Jamie could paint the brick pink and he’s likely never to know. Not that she’s planning on it. Viola clicks her tongue, and Jamie turns around, twisting her neck to the see her set aside whatever she’s reading with a dissatisfied sigh.
“Boring?”
“Deeply uninteresting,” Viola agrees. “I do wonder where all the money has been squandered away to since I last lived here.”
“Poured into the fancy silverware the valet ran off with, I reckon.” Jamie sticks her knife between her teeth, smoothing over an errant bit of spackle. Now for the sanding and polish, but first she waves it with a rag to let it dry out some. “So, eh… thoughts on the new au pair?”
Unlike Hannah, Viola is more than willing to gossip. “Miss Clayton seems like a lovely addition to the house. For the little I’ve seen of her, she is polite and unnervingly kind.”
“She is that.”
“The children seem to like her, if that counts for anything.” It doesn’t, since the children like just about anyone; it does, since not everyone could get them to brush their teeth so fast or clean up their rooms so well or behave like proper young’uns and still leave them every day with smiles on their faces and stories to tell. The balance between being a good role model and a good caretaker is like a thin tightrope in the Andes Mountains and Dani Clayton makes it look like a cake walk. Jamie hums, smoothing over the spackle and finding it dry. She reaches for her sandpaper. The wall won’t look quite the same without that roughed-up texture. “I do adore her stories of the col- America,” Viola continues, coughing on her little anachronism.
“Talked to her much one-on-one, then?”
“Here and there.” Viola waves her hand, and when Jamie looks back to drop her sandpaper in the bucket she sees… well, damn. A smile, on Viola’s face. “A proper introduction was necessary, and she has a propensity for taking winding midnight walks. We met, two wanderers in the night, a few evenings after she arrived here. I’m sure she thought I was a spirit, or perhaps a figment of her imagination, but she seemed unsurprised when I told her how long I’d been here.” Ah yes, the Viola-the-ghost origin story which everyone at Bly, sans children who probably didn’t need to hear it, had been subject to at one point or another. “She said she’d met a few spirits herself in her time. Told me a lovely story about a figure named Patricia who helped her with her… times tables? When she younger, she said.”
Poppins talks to ghosts. Absolutely fuckin’ figures. “Yeah, that sounds like her.” Jamie dabs polish on the wall to freshen it up. “Tell me you at least gave her the shortened version. Left the bits about the tax fraud and evil child-stealing sisters out of your tragic backstory.”
Viola sniffs. “I did nothing of the sort.”
“Right.” Jamie coughs into her hand from polish fumes and screws on the crooked cap of the pot. “Should be settled. Can tell Hannah, when you see her, I’ve fixed the wall.”
“If I do. I believe she’s gone off to the well,” Viola offers, toying with the hem of her nightgown. Jamie raises a single eyebrow.
If Hannah’s gone off to the well, bad things are happening. The well is empty and dark and cold and hasn’t brung up water since probably before Viola’s time, and according to Owen it’s a haunted place and to Hannah it’s a powerful one. Where she goes when she needs to think, or breathe, or do a little bit worse. Get her hands a bit dirty. Jamie, suffice to say, spends as much time as she can away from the well.
“Taking last night’s conversation to heart, then?”
“I suppose she is.” Viola casts her eyes around the kitchen. “You wouldn’t happen to have any tea lying around here, would you?”
Jamie licks her lips. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
---
“Miss Clayton! Miss Clayton, I think Miles is going to eat a bug!”
For the first time all day, Jamie sees Dani’s careful prim-and-buttoned-up veneer crack and, just, shatter. “Miles, do I honestly have to tell you not to eat bugs?”
“No, Miss Clayton.” Miles dejectedly shakes off his hand in the dense bush again and continues plodding on.
They’re on a hike today, wrapped in coats and sweaters as the gathering autumn winds hit their backs. Jamie was chosen as the guide for this little expedition, seeing as she knows the ridiculous length of the Wingraves’ land like the back of her hand. Already today she’s seen Dani spin a tale for the children featuring a talking squirrel, accompanied with visuals, and allow them to play with butterflies that Jamie’s relatively sure she’s never seen in this part of Essex before. That special Miss Clayton magic.
Jamie bumps Dani’s elbow with her arm. “Penny for your thoughts, Poppins?”
Dani looks up, a rueful smile playing on her lips. “I got a letter from Iowa this morning.”
“When did you have time to get to town?” Jamie frowns.
“It came down the chimney.” Dani waves away the explanation. “The letter was from my fiancé’s mother. Well, my ex-fiancé’s mother. I’d broken… We had broken up. I’d broken up, I guess. With him. Before I left for London.” Dani coughs a little bit into her hand. “He’s dead now.”
Huh. Jamie rubs her tongue along her teeth, clenches and unclenches her fingers around the edges of her coat. “And she’s… writing you because?”
“I have his glasses.” Takes Jamie by surprise, again, the way Dani talks and thinks and moves. Everything is just as meaningful as anything else, and when you move like that nothing has any meaning at all. Their bangers and mash lunch matters as much in this moment as Dani, carrying around a dead man’s glasses. And sure enough she digs into her pockets – endless, as always – and brings out a pair of cracked spectacles. Gold rimmed. Astute, probably, on a boy tall with dark hair. Jamie can just see his face and a bolt of something undead and aching hits her just under the ribs. “She wants me to mail them back,” Dani says after a long moment, rubbing the bridge with her thumb.
Jamie looks down at the glasses, looks up at Dani’s eyes, down at the glasses again. “Can’t part with ‘em?”
“I can’t.” Dani sighs, a shuddering thing, and Jamie takes a small step closer, just in case. “He was wearing them when the car hit and I remember seeing them hit the ground, I just… I mean, I still see him sometimes? In mirrors, and car windows and things… I know it sounds crazy, but-”
“Not crazy.” Jamie cuts her off. “Surprisingly sane, considering.” The air she puffs through her lips winds to the sky in clouds, twisting upwards. Dani, next to her, keeps walking, unwilling to let the kids out of her sight, or maybe unable. Jamie understands things like that. Compensation. “I, uh…” She starts. “It can be tricky, I think. Losing something like that, and then having to deal with it afterwards, I mean. I mean it’s love. It’s… doesn’t go away easy, does it?”
“That’s the thing.” Dani snaps her fingers, points one at Jamie like a gun, and Jamie makes a face. “See, it wasn’t love. It was… toleration. He venerated me, and I tolerated him, like… anyway. It wasn’t like it was when we were kids.”
“Known each other long?”
Whatever Jamie did to make Dani trust her with her life story, she isn’t complaining. Not in the slightest, as Dani starts a winding tale of youthhood in Iowa that spans the rest of their climb up the decent-sized hill that, actually, where the hell did this come from? The Wingraves’ land is flat.
The crest looks out over a vista Jamie is plainly sure she’s never seen in her life. All goldenrod and red leaves and snow-capped mountains, like she’s been transplanted to the middle of Vermont without noticing. Maybe she bloody has, at the rate this hike is going.
“And that’s when we learned that Nicole was horribly allergic to pineapple,” Dani finishes her latest story with a flourish, having moved on to lighter things than dead exes and the haunting marks they leave. She claps her hands once, not having noticed Jamie’s dumbstruck look at the view, and calls out for the kids, who come running back from the edge of the hill with beaming faces.
“Dani,” Jamie asks carefully as Dani removes packages of food and blankets from her backpack, food Owen must have cooked without her realizing. “Where are we?”
Dani looks around, looks at the kids, looks back at Jamie. “I’m not totally sure? Could be anywhere, really.”
“Florida!” Flora cheers. Dani has taught her about the States and she now has a small obsession with her could-be namesake. “Or Jamaica, maybe. For Jamie!”
This woodsy landscape looks little like Florida or Jamaica, but sure, whatever Flora wants. Jamie sits down cross-legged and accepts the plate of carrots and turkey sandwiches Dani hands her without complaining. Or… questioning.
On the way back down, Dani walks a little bit closer, lets their hands bump into each other a little bit more. She smells nice. Like fresh grass, maybe, or… laundry detergent? Jamie still can’t tell but she likes it. As they pass trees that get more familiar the farther they descend, she breathes right alongside Jamie.
“So anyway, it’s the old childhood friends to engaged thing.” She waves her hand like this is indeed commonplace. Picking up right where she left off, and Jamie might get whiplash from this woman. Is that a bad thing? Jury’s out, call back on Thursday. “I never really said no, at any point, and so this whole life just… fell into my lap! Just like that. And now that I have the space to figure it out – god, it feels horrible to say – I think things make more sense now. Like I was doing what he wanted for so long and being who he wanted and now I can… be who I am. And I’m getting to know more things.”
“Getting to know what you want?” Jamie brushes their hands together, maybe a little more on purpose this time, catches the blue of Dani’s eyes in the corner of her own. Dani licks her lips, glances down and then up, pulls back the corners of her mouth and shit if Jamie’s ever been good at body language, but:
Dani smiling at her like that and Dani saying “Getting to know what I need.” These things go together.
---
There’s a fluidity to Dani that Jamie doesn’t have with any other person, a gentle rocking to their conversation and a similarity in their breaths that feels perennial. But the closest Jamie gets with anyone else is with a brew and Hannah, and on occasion Owen, during her afternoon breaks before she goes back to work herself to the bone for a few hours pre-dinner.
Today, the conversation has something to do with farmer’s markets, namely whether or not Jamie should partake in one.
“You could do so well, with your flowers and your vegetables, though,” Owen is arguing, with telltale twitches of his mustache that mean he’s plotting something. “You know, there’s this place in Chelmsford, really great artisans. I order the honey that I put in buttercreams from there.” Owen’s honey buttercream is one of his signature creations and… okay, maybe worth the trek down to Chelmsford. “Plus, tons of the artsy folk. They’d go crazy for your whole…”
“My what?” Jamie narrows her eyes as Owen flounders to come up with adequate adjectives, continuing to flap his hands uselessly in her direction.
“You know, your… dirty, newly awakened forest gremlin look.”
“Dirty forest gremlin.” Jamie tests it out on her tongue, cocks her head to the side, and calmly walks to the sink. She fills a cup with water. She tosses it in Owen’s face.
Hannah, bless her, hides a muffled laugh behind her cup of tea.
“I guess I deserve that.” Owen flicks water out of his eyes onto Jamie, who yelps and attempts to cover her arms from the cold splatters.
“Children, please.” Hannah, admonishing but polite as always, is the only one who can get them to calm down. Jamie slinks back to the table, making eyes at Owen the whole way.
“But I’m not kidding about the farmer’s market thing.” Owen aims a pointer finger in her direction. “Bly used to have one. I went all the time with my mum when I was little. She used to pick up strawberries every week in the summer.” Jamie can practically see Owen chew on his tongue as he says the words, swallows the memories that exist only in his head these days back down his choked throat. Her eyes soften, just a little. Hannah clicks her tongue.
“How is your mother doing, Owen?”
“Fine, fine. She’s… doing better every day.” Owen busies himself shredding cheese into a giant bowl. Jamie slips her eyes to Hannah, finds them waiting for her as well. She casts her eyes to the side and sucks air in through her teeth: the universal Jamie face for skeptical.
“I went to the well yesterday,” Hannah mutters low, so’s not to alert Owen to a surreptitious conversation.
“Viola mentioned.” Jamie drums her fingertips on the broken wood grains of the table. “Anything… interesting happen?”
“Oh, well, not much.” Thank god Owen weren’t listening, or he’d call out the accidental pun and completely derail the conversation. Not that Jamie’s brain is doing a much better job. Too long with these munters, she’d say. Hannah taps her nails against her teacup. “I did look for his mother. She’s dim, almost… almost too dim, unfortunately. I’m very worried.”
“Viola seems to think there’s something you can do.”
“Viola thinks a lot of things.” Isn’t that the truth. “Not all of them about me are… correct. She has great faith in my abilities, but some things are beyond this world’s control and I’m afraid…”
“What, Owen’s mother is one of them?” Hannah shakes her head slowly.
Jamie’s seen things since she’s come to Bly. Things that are odd and things that are unexplainable. Seen kids, bounce back from illness with magical sugar cures baked up in Owen’s kitchen. Seen doors open at a shout and close at a whisper, seen ghosts wander through deserted corridors. She’s seen Hannah light candles by looking at them and she’s seen a portrait wink at her as she walks by (Perdita Willoughby, the incorrigible flirt). Seen herself, hands buried deep in soil and rock, coax a flower from seedling to bloom in a blink of time.
Jamie hasn’t seen anyone cheat death. She hasn’t seen, so far, the important things circumvented, and maybe that says something about her, or about Bly. But it’s more likely it says something about-
“There are things,” Hannah says finally, “that we simply cannot change. No matter how hard we try. Three things, I think that are final and determinate and infallible. Three things that make up the very groundwork of the universe.”
“Death,” Jamie guesses, and Hannah frowns.
“Deterioration, more like. It takes a strong soul to circumvent that.”
“Right. So, then… growth?”
Hannah hums. “The three things, I think, are the things we see the most of in this world. I’d call them deterioration, possession, and… to be frank, I suppose you could say devotion.”
Into the kitchen comes Dani, at the heels of two beaming children talking about fractional cannibals and whatnot, smiling at Jamie over four-foot heads. Hi, she mouths with a wave of her fingers, and Jamie waves back.
“Devotion’s pretty hard to hurt, innit?”
“It is indeed.” Jamie’s pretty sure Hannah isn’t psychic, but she wouldn’t have to be to read her mind. The light of Dani reflects pretty well already, all over her face.
---
Of all the strange things at Bly, two grown women kneeling on the floor crowded around a child-sized television screen is not really one of the strangest.
“You can’t just- you can’t just stack them all in one line. Oh, my god, Jamie, what are you doing?” Jamie wrenches the NES controller away Dani’s grabby hands – contrary to what Poppins might think, she’s actually very good at this game.
“I’m freeing up space. Good lord, just- let me do my work, Poppins!” This console was sent to Bly by the estranged Lord Wingrave as a birthday present for Miles, along with a pile of games. He pronounced it boring after one game of Super Mario, and Dani and Jamie have co-opted it for their own purposes, namely being… very competitive over Tetris.
“Jamie, if you stack them to the top of the screen you lose.”
“I know.”
“You’re one line away from the top of the screen.” A large, square block drops from the sky into the exact position Jamie wanted it in. “Okay, well. I didn’t know it was going to do that.”
“See, I’ve optimized the game now. Now I just line up these little ones- fuck.” Jamie’s strategy was, to be fair, foolproof. What isn’t foolproof is the power at this godforsaken Manor, which has winked out for the third time this month. Blame the weather, blame Bly itself, but something really, really wants them to have a-
“Sleepover!” Flora’s radiant little voice comes whizzing down the corridor at top speed, stopping outside the games room as she pokes her head around the corner. “Please, Miss Clayton, please say we can!”
“Up to Jamie,” Dani notes with amusement in her voice. Jamie grumbles. Power outage normally equates to Jamie and Owen staying at the house overnight, just to keep an eye on things. The children have gotten very used to this special treatment, to Jamie’s everlasting chagrin. The outages have been so common lately Jamie’s kept an extra set of clothes and overalls in the guest room’s dresser.
She shrugs. “Might as well. S’Owen staying?”
“I’ll ask.” Flora opens her mouth to holler, and Dani holds up a finger. Flora opens her mouth once or twice, confused by why no sound is coming out.
“Walk down the stairs and ask Owen if he’s staying. No yelling across the house, mmkay?” Dani releases Flora’s voice and accepts her eager nod. Jamie glances at her wryly.
“Oh, the power’s out again.” Viola’s ethereal voice drifts through the wall, she herself soon following. “I thought I heard Bertram mention that might happen today.”
“Is Bertram the butler-y looking guy hanging down in the west wing?” Dani asks, pointing in that general direction. Viola shakes her head firmly.
“Bertram is the soldier. He keeps to the tea room, you may not have seen him often.”
“He’s the one who likes my zinnias,” Jamie offers, and Dani nods, likely recollecting a story Jamie had told about ghost Bertram trying to steal a vase and not being able to pick it up. Not all the wandering poltergeists are quite as… solid as Viola often is. Leading to some rather hilarious situations.
“Does that mean the house is planning the outages?” Dani questions sanely for such a ridiculous question.
“Means the bloody house is conspiring against my Tetris high score, that’s what.” Jamie stands, brushing off her dungarees and offering a hand to Dani. “Well, Owen’s likely got dinner half-done, at the least. Shall we find biscuits?”
It isn’t until her, Dani, and Viola are amicably wandering down the hallway that Jamie notices her and Dani’s hands are still linked, her thumb brushing idly over Dani’s warm, dry skin. She holds back a swallow, goes to move away, realizes Dani has her in a death grip. Okay, then. Not like she needs that hand at the moment, anyway.
Viola coughs wetly. “It might rain this evening. There are clouds gathering.”
“Do you cough more when it rains?” Dani asks curiously. Viola gives her a withering glare.
“Darling, if I knew why I coughed, I would stop.” That’s fair.
Owen does, indeed, have a bowl of cake batter prepared and some chicken cut and not much else, so they take turns dipping their fingers in the bowl, have a small argument over whether the cake needs more cinnamon or more pumpkin. Cinnamon wins out, but by the time Owen goes to add more a good third of the batter is missing and they decide it’s worthless.
Dani makes the kids wash their hands before digging into a bowl of cut peppers Hannah has placed on the table. “Now how do you get them to do that?” Jamie asks.
Dani raises her eyebrows. “What? Wash their hands or eat vegetables?” Jamie shrugs. “I tell them about germs, and then I tell them that the peppers are brought here specially by a guy named Patrick the Pepper Man.”
“Least it’s not Pete. This house has a bad thing with Petes.” Jamie shrugs, reaching for a pepper herself. “This Patrick sounds benevolent. Grows a damn good pepper, too.”
“You should know.” Dani elbows Jamie in the ribs. “I mean, Pete’s pretty short. Kind of skinny, curly brown hair, green eyes.”
Jamie resists a groan, settles for rolling those aforementioned green eyes. “You’re chuffed about that one, aren’t you?”
“Kind of.” Dani steals the rest of the pepper out of Jamie’s hand. She lets her.
Once the various nonperishables have disappeared from the kitchen, the children disappear and return dressed in costume, announcing an impromptu candlelight Storytime. The second Dani’s been around for, and Jamie is damn well losing count of how many times she’s been roped into this nonsense.
Flora begins: a tale about a cat. Or, a story, about a cat named Tails? An orphan. Jamie blanks after the first rhyming couplet and starts doubling her wine intake. By the time Miles is ranting about puppets she’s lost the plot entirely.
Dani applauds and cheers when necessary, but once the wee ones are washed up and tucked in she’s as bemused as the rest of them. “When life gives you power outages, make elaborate costumes and come up with nursery rhyme poems,” she says under her breath to Jamie, who muffles a snort as Hannah searches the linen closet for pillows for the guest beds.
Given the sudden nature of her overnight stay, Jamie doesn’t retire right away. She slips out to the greenhouse with the rest of her wine bottle, tends plants with one drunken hand and contemplates writing Dani a love poem with the other – decisions made on wine brain, Jamie thinks, should be ignored, crumpled, thrown in the garbage can – and sneaks back in through the kitchen as the clock is ticking past one AM.
Bly at night is an off-kilter thing. A little wild around the edges, dark in all the wrong corners. The air hums in an entirely different way in the daytime, and every room feels a little too still. Jamie digs her electric torch from her jacket pocket and tries to find her way to her door. Gets halfway in before tripping on something that isn’t there. She hears the busty lady on the wall behind her chuckle and shushes her dramatically.
Jamie would be willing to fall asleep in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts and her Blondie shirt, given that’s all she has, only Dani’s left a sweater on her bed, and a note: Parapet? I have more wine :)
The sweater smells like Dani (still an unnamable smell, but pleasant) and the scratchy hem lands around the top of Jamie’s thigh. She arms herself with a torch and heads for the parapet.
---
Dani is sitting on the parapet in a metal chair, tucked up under a flannel blanket. An unopened bottle of wine is on the table next to her. The ficus on the table raises one leaf in greeting. Hello human. Friend is nice.
“She is nice,” Jamie confirms in a mutter in the general direction of the plant, and Dani flattens her lips, hiding a smile.
The blanket Dani’s got over her lap is big enough to cover two chairs, but only if they press up next to each other, on the same side of the table, trading wine back and forth over their laps with their arms brushing and no space between them. Jamie, a little drunk at this point, takes all of this contact in with glee. Craves more. Does her best to not just start slobbering all over Dani like a big dog, settles for smiling softly and scooting in closer instead.
“When I checked on Flora in bed, I saw you were outside.” Dani says finally, after a long while of nothing that feels very comfortable to Jamie. “I couldn’t sleep either, so I thought I’d invite you out.”
“Thanks for the sweater,” Jamie says. Dani hums. “House is creepy at night, isn’t it?”
“It is.”
Something comes over Jamie. “Did you… what, did you see me through the window or something? In Flora’s room?”
“No, her dollhouse has a little baby greenhouse attached. I saw your doll in there.”
“Oh… okay.” Flora’s dollhouse is frighteningly accurate, to be fair.
More silence, more wine, more of Jamie’s arm hairs standing on end as their arms brush even through a few layers of clothes. She sighs.
“Nights like these remind me of when I was little.” Dani glances over at her. “’Specially when I was really young, we… we didn’t have heat then. Little flat, but without air going and it starts to feel huge, and I’d be in this big bed, alone some of the time. My brother, Denny, he’d be up still or something. I would just… lay there, and sometimes I thought I heard things.”
“What, like ghosts?” Dani is teasing, gently, like she knows she’s playing with fire. Jamie swigs some more wine.
“Nah. Like things growing, underground. Like roots spreading.” Fuck. Tonight is the night she chooses, tonight she lets it all out? The wine, Dani’s closeness and the smell of her sweater, Bly and it’s peculiarities, the power, what is she blaming?
“Didn’t grow up nice.” She’s blaming Dani. It’s all Dani’s fault, has been for weeks. “And didn’t grow up with much, you know… growth. Lots of rot, actually, and dead things, so old and lifeless that they will literally burn. And I didn’t learn how to take care of much.” Jamie shifts, tries to stop her shirt rubbing against her shoulder the way it always does when she goes here. Thinks like this. She hates, hates when she thinks like this.
Dani is quiet. So Jamie keeps going.
“I like growing things and taking care of things but plants, they do a lot of it for you. They tell you what you need and you give it to them. No… interpretation needed, you know? I’m good at that, the listenin’ and the doing. So I do. I… I was in London for a time, dunno if I told you.” Dani shakes her head.
“And it’s hard, there. Really fucking hard, to be safe and good and all when you’re just little and you haven’t got anything on you, not even… meat on your bones to keep you warm, you know? I… did what I knew how to do, and a lot of trouble got mixed up, somewhere in the works.” Dani’s fingers, under the blanket, are inching closer to Jamie’s chair. She lets them.
“Spent a couple ‘a years inside, and then, um…” keep going now, you mardy idiot, finish it off. “Then I came here. And I stayed here. They, uh, Charlotte told me my job was to take care of things. I took to that more than the trouble, ‘a think. Sorta like penance. Learned how to do it and made myself do it, for them, cause I couldn’t do it before. If that makes sense.”
“Do you like staying here?” Dani only asks when she’s sure Jamie’s done. Her fingers, now, dangle over the edge of Jamie’s armrest, brushing against the fabric of her boxer shorts and sending warmth spreading over her thighs.
“It’s a way to be,” Jamie responds. She takes another long drag of wine, itches for a cigarette. “Uh, I figured. Since you showed me yours I’ll show you mine, you know, tit for tat.”
Dani laughs, covers it with a cough. “Thanks. I mean, mine wasn’t so… just, thank you. For sharing that with me.” Her hand settles full over Jamie’s knee now, making Jamie’s mouth dry and her eyelids heavy. Or, that’s the wine.
“Lots of people in this world take work to feel comfortable with,” Jamie offers up, passing the wine back to Dani. “Don’t feel like that with you.”
“I’m honored.”
“Y’should be.”
They stay on the parapet until four. They don’t talk the whole time, but when they do they speak softly so’s not to disturb any ghosts. Dani keeps her hand on Jamie’s knee the whole time.
---
The next morning: Jamie wakes up in her boxer shorts and Dani’s sweater, splayed out on her bed under a flannel blanket. The sound of the clock ticking tells her, blessedly, the power is back on. She remembers in vague detail and blurry corners wandering through the house, Dani’s arm around her neck, them giggling quietly so they don’t wake the children, Owen, Hannah. She collapsed on her bed, Dani covered her with a blanket, whispered “sweet dreams weirdo” and left. And Jamie slept her wine drunk ass off and now…
Her head pounds but she isn’t nauseous yet. There’s a glass of water and a spoon in a jar of sugar, half empty, on the nightstand. A sticky note says just a spoonful of sugar helps the hangover go away. A painfully bad doodle of an umbrella that makes Jamie snort. She downs the water in one go and swallows a bit of sugar, just for the hell of it. It tastes… sugary and doesn’t do much to help with the hangover.
Jamie pulls herself out of bed and does a general checkup. Her faculties are about, her head is on straight, and she has a fresh pair of only slightly dirt covered dungarees folded in the dresser. Life is, if not perfect, predictably decent.
She dresses, which amounts to covering herself in denim and letting her arms hang out from a worn tank top. She folds Dani’s sweater neatly and makes a mental note to get it back to her, at some point. When she’s stopped taking general whiffs in its direction. (Seriously, what does that woman smell like? Is it like a pleasant cough syrup? Rose water?)
The trip downstairs is hasty, because somewhere down in that maze there’s tea. Jamie ties her hair back, unwashed and frizzy, and tangles her fingers in the gold chain around her neck for security’s sake. Padding barefoot into the kitchen, she finds that Owen is apparently not awake. Or if he is, he’s hiding. There’s a kettle brewing, but it’s been prepared by Dani, ostensibly, who leans against the counter engrossed in the local paper.
“That come down the chimney for you?” Jamie waves in the paper’s direction. It’s a long while before she gets an answer, and she realizes that while she’s turned around getting a mug Dani has been staring – unabashedly, if the unhinging of her jaw is any indication – at the exposed parts of her back and shoulders where the denim and cotton don’t reach. “Ah, ‘s, uh… seen the scar, ‘aven’t ya?”
Jamie’s accent gets noticeably thicker when she’s embarrassed which does not currently top the list of things she has to be embarrassed about. Dani furrows her eyebrows, her mouth still hanging open.
“No. I mean, yes, jeez, that looks like it hurt…” Dani makes a face in accordance with the mewling, apologetic sound that leaves her mouth, “but I was… You have nice shoulders. You know. Someone should tell you.”
A beat. Jamie allows a small smile to cross her lips. “Thanks.”
“Yeah. You’re welcome.” The kettle, ever the timely bloke, whistles at that precise moment, and the way Dani scrambles around is somewhat of a comedy. She lifts it from the stove and starts the pour into the pot. “Uh, you’re up early.”
“Am I?” She’s not. It’s past seven; in fact, she’s up late. “I mean, I’m a gardener. Tend to get up with the sun, me. Plants like their breakfast done early.”
“Oh, I’d bet.” Dani slides the pot across the counter, a few handfuls of teabags hanging out the side. Jamie raises an eyebrow but fills her mug because tea, the nice boiling leaf beverage she needs to get her going in the AM. “Here. Fuel, then, I guess.”
Fuel indeed. Tea that tastes like petrol oil going down. Like Jamie’s guzzling whatever her truck runs on. She hopes, she really hopes Dani doesn’t get offended when she gently spits it back in the cup. If it helps, making tea seems to be about the only thing Dani can’t do.
She says as much when Dani looks depressed at the kettle, behind her on the stove. “S’alright, though,” she offers in penance. “You make a mean cup of hot cocoa, and, uh, hey. S’not like kids thrive on tea, right?”
“You thrive on tea,” Jamie hears Dani say. She shrugs.
“Can make my own tea, Poppins.”
“I just wanted to do something nice,” Dani whines a little petulantly, and… snap. Jamie can’t hide her smirk from growing, nor can she deny what is very obviously happening right now.
“Did you wake up just for this?”
“…No.” Dani hasn’t, as of yet, turned around.
“So you just… got up with the sun. And you’re tiptoeing around the kitchen making awful tea by yourself… just hoping I’ll come say hi before it’s off to work with me?” She’s fully laughing now, as Dani turns, the most sheepish, sheepish look on her face.
“Okay, okay, fine. You said some pretty deep stuff last night and I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
That’s arguably the sweetest thing been done to Jamie by anyone in years. To know that Dani cares makes her collarbone heat up in a most unfortunate way. Unfortunate, also, that it’s viewable to a certain au pair standing not four feet away in the kitchen.
“Gee, Poppins. I, uh…” The instinct to lie, to blow it off, does not come. “Thank you for that.”
“So are you okay?”
Jamie is distracted a wee bit by the way Dani’s blouse tugs down when she leans forward suddenly, the way her hair falls in her face, the way the Dani-ness of her fills the kitchen like it was made to be there. “Huh?”
“Are you okay? After last night?”
Jamie startles back into herself with a wide smile. Zero to three-sixty to Jesus-this-woman-is-magic in less than a second. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m alright, Poppins.”
“Good.” Dani cheers up noticeably at that. “Well, I should go get the kids. Owen will be down to make breakfast soon.”
For the next few seconds, Jamie decides, she will blame the house and all the horrible instincts it has to offer. For the next few seconds as she meets Dani stride for stride in the middle of the kitchen and presses a kiss, whisper soft, to her cheek.
“Thanks for the bad tea,” she toasts her, and Dani’s blush is her fuel for the rest of the morning, English Breakfast be damned.
---
“Jamie! Jamie!” Two little voices that can only belong to- oh sweet Jesus.
“Miles Wingrave, did nobody tell you not to rock a person on a ladder?” Jamie scrambles down as fast her heavy boots will allow, pointing an accusing finger in her face. “Don’t ever do that shit again, do you hear me? Or I will-”
“Miss Clayton said to come get you!” Flora chimes in, unawares of the verbal beatdown Miles was about to get. “We’re having lunch. And Mrs. Grose’s upset at you.”
Lunch, a blessed respite from the gutter cleaning Jamie’s been doing all day out at the greenhouse. Damn October rains and all they stand for. “Whatever could she be upset at me for?” Jamie feigns innocence for the sake of the children; she can picture many things. “I am a delight.”
“Mrs. Grose said there are muddy footprints all over the floor,” Miles offers. Jamie thinks on it. She hasn’t been tracking mud through the house lately, not that she generally keeps track of that sort of thing.
“I said it might have been Viola, but she said Viola hasn’t been round lately,” Flora says, half a skip ahead of Jamie and Miles as they pick their way through the woods back to the house. She gasps, her face lighting up in surprise. “Miles! What if it’s the man Miss Clayton told us about?”
“The pumpkin man?” Miles asks with just as much excitement.
“Hold up, there’s a pumpkin man? Sounds like a monster,” Jamie says.
Flora turns around and starts walking backwards, gesticulating in her Flora way. “Oh, no, you mustn’t! He’s perfectly lovely. He comes to every house on the very last night of October and brings candy! So much there’s… there’s…”
“Pillowcases full of it,” Miles finishes proudly.
“Sounds like Poppins is getting her holidays mixed up,” Jamie chuckles, though… pumpkin man. She doesn’t grow pumpkins on the grounds, but she wouldn’t put it past Bly to send them something like that to deal with. Bloody pumpkin men.
If Jamie doesn’t have nightmares about pumpkin men now it’ll be a bloody miracle.
Dani sits at lunch, ever innocent, in a purple blouse-and-button-up combo and a simple plait. Jamie plops down beside her and tickles her behind the ear, getting dirt on her clean skin, that, she has finally decided, smells like applesauce. No, that really isn’t it.
“That’s for telling the little ones about pumpkin demons,” Jamie whispers low, and Dani startles, wiping the dirt from behind her ear and giggling.
“To be fair,” she says, leaning close to Jamie to respond (it’s not applesauce. Something else, then), “he’s a big hit in the States. They’ve got a television special about him and everything.”
“You Americans are terrifying.” Jamie doesn’t get the chance to say more, because Owen is putting a plate of food in front of her and Dani is tucking an errant curl behind her ear.
“Thanks,” Jamie says. Marvels at how that kind of intimacy just kind of comes with the Dani Clayton of it all.
“Oh, Jamie,” Hannah says clicking her fork against her plate. “The muddy footprints in the hallway-”
“Are not mine,” Jamie swears, crossing her fingers over her chest. “Check with the lady in the lake.”
“I did see Viola last night,” Dani says. The table turns to her. “I… I couldn’t sleep. I took a walk downstairs. She was huddled up on the stairs and crying. We talked for a little while. About… boy problems and such.”
“What… what did you decide?” This dubious question that Owen asks also makes perfect sense to Jamie in this moment.
Dani shrugs simply. “That boys aren’t worth the effort.”
The eye contact she makes with Jamie here feels… yeah, this really feels like it should be significant.
That goddamn Perdita Willoughby portrait winks at her when she crosses through the main foyer on her way outside. Jamie ought to deface that thing someday.
---
Good evening, human. Good to see you, human. Where is pretty human, human?
Jamie chews on her lip. “Poppins is inside. Helping to clean up dinner with Owen.”
We like the pretty human, the cacti croon as she checks them over for rot. Jamie lets a smile crawl across her face and settle.
“Yeah? I like her too.” She plucks a few dead blooms from pots of flowers, ignores their protests of ouch. This is daily work and if Jamie is honest she’s rushing, just a bit. Dani asked if she wanted to have a drink after dinner, and Jamie has goddamn chores to do or she’d already be having that drink, sitting with Dani and watching her throat flex and her smile grow and talking about whatever they talk about today, maybe the best kinds of candy, maybe the agony of phys ed in primary school. Like kids, they are, best friends who just want to share the world with each other. Jamie finds she likes looking at the world a little more closely, picking things apart and putting them back together in new ways, when she’s with Dani.
Do you think pretty human is pretty? This comes from the morning glories hanging above Jamie’s head. She stands on her tiptoes to glare at them, in particular, the little snots. They’re always taking the piss for something. You turn warm color around pretty human.
“Dani is very pretty, yes.” Jamie will not – will not – give those little buggers the satisfaction of knowing they’ve gotten under her collar.
Cause if even her fucking plants can tell she’s sweet on Dani she’s very, very far gone.
Take pretty human to see moon brothers, says the hosta, an outspoken fan of Dani since their first meeting. Moon brothers will welcome her.
The “moon brothers,” as these idiot foliage fiends call them, are Jamie’s moonflowers. Three twisting vines of thick dark leaves and white blooms that only open at night when everything else is asleep, to be beautiful on their own terms, in privacy. Jamie’s kept them for years. Plants them every spring. Normally, they bloom for about a three week spurt in early spring, but the ground at Bly is strange and the dirt clings harder here. Dead things at Bly tend to come back.
Moonflowers are finicky plants. Hard to grow. Harder to take care of, to keep in your grasp without feeling them slipping through your fingers. They bloom and then die, in a cycle not even Bly can break: like Hannah says, you can’t stop something from deteriorating. You can bring it back, not exactly the same, but things still live and grow and die no matter where you are and what you do. The moonflowers remind Jamie of that when it all gets too much. Sometimes she feels like she’s being swallowed, she goes outside.
Dani might like it out there. Might even understand what Jamie says when she talks about life, the circle of it, how some things are worth it because they just are, because they deserve it and no one else is going to take care of them.
“Are you trying to give me date advice, right now?” she asks the plants in general. The morning glories titter amongst themselves but don’t answer. None of the others say a thing.
Jamie flicks the leaf of a nearby fern and it crumples away from her touch, shriveling up. “Stupid little buggers,” she mutters, stroking the leaf until it grows back to itself again. She’s not horribly cruel, honest. Just terribly inpatient with these fricking know-it-alls.
---
Later that night, in a place untouched by Dani (as of yet) and the only place other than Bly Jamie feels safe:
She lays in her bed with the comforter kicked down to her feet, thinking about things. The breeze comes in through the window and ruffles the leaves of the plants around her bed. These plants don’t talk. They let her think. As always, when Jamie leaves the gravity well of Bly and comes back to her own flat, she finds something just the slightest bit off kilter.
Jamie spent years in a lot of different places. First, a flat too full and too empty at the same time, then house after house after house and not all of the bedroom doors locked. Then to London, to a few different alleys and some moth-bitten couches and more than one cramped university girl’s twin bed. Then the world behind concrete walls and barbed-wire gates; not much grows there, not even the prison’s greenhouse. Now, here. The country. Fresh, clean air, so many trees, grass and plants and land Jamie can exist in with all of her space. A queer little manor, nestled into the countryside, full to bursting with people who will call her family.
Of all the arms she’s been in, Jamie likes Hannah’s grip the best. Of all the cakes she’s tasted, Owen is by far the most proficient at the art. Of anyone’s dry wit, she’d prefer Viola’s, and in all honesty she doesn’t much mind the mess the kids’ll make in her garden, long as they’re willing to help clean it up (and receive a gentle smack on the back of the head, she’s not really above that). She likes the plants that wave to her and the fireplace that lights when she asks it and the way they call it Jamie’s greenhouse. Likes having a place to roost if she needs, a chair at the dinner table.
And then, Dani. Pretty American finds her way into the house and crawls up in their hearts, takes hold like they’ll fly away if she isn’t careful. They’ve all got soft spots for her, and Jamie’s is a goddamned marshmallow. Dani does that to people.
Thing is, Jamie’s been growing like ivy into the walls of Bly Manor since four years ago when she first set foot on the property, slowly becoming one with the stonework and finding a home for her messy parts in the lattice of the iron gates. And here comes Dani Clayton, this new part of this very old house, and somehow Jamie’s been done adjusting to the addition and growing around it, she thinks, since she met her. Somehow, Dani just fits.
Fits pretty well, Jamie contemplates, hugging an arm around her pillow and burying her nose into the collar of Dani’s sweater she’s managed to still be wearing.
---
Meet Dani Clayton, the absolute death of Jamie. She has to know, she has to know, when she brushes her sneaker like that against Jamie’s calf the way it makes her go red and messy. She has to know that, right? She can’t… there’s no way Dani’s that obtuse.
No, she’s grinning into her wine. She definitely knows.
“Remember, guys,” Dani says, like she’s done nothing as she retracts her foot from Jamie’s leg and points a finger at Flora and Miles. “Tonight, you’re helping Owen with the dishes.”
There is only the slightest grumbling from Miles at this proclamation, while Flora seems delighted at being given something to do. It’s been raining all day, which has kept the lot of them inside. Viola arrived at the door for dinner more drenched than she usually is.
“I’m afraid they might be doing them alone,” Owen smiles weakly into his tea. “I’ve got to get home early tonight, for my mum. She’s… were taking her to the hospital in Rochford tomorrow morning. I told you, didn’t I?” Hannah nods softly. “There’s a doctor there that might be some help in the… you know.”
“I’m very sorry,” Viola says solemnly. “She sounds, from what you’ve said, like a wonderful and strong woman.”
“Yeah. She was. Not so much now, you know, but…” Owen clears his throat, the table feeling still in his sadness. When he looks up his eyes are watering. “It’s weird, watching her fall apart like that, but in a way it all feels natural, doesn’t it?” He meets Jamie’s eyes. She gives him the slightest toast of her glass. “And… and I wish there was something I could do to stop it but even if I could, it wouldn’t be right. If I could’ve stopped it ages ago, maybe, but… it was always coming. I’m glad I came back, got as much time as I could, and now… I’ll let time take what it takes.” He shrugs, his mustache shifting with the movements of his mouth. “I’ll come out in a batter place.”
Viola allows him a small laugh. Hannah rolls her eyes but reaches across the table for his hand anyway. Next to Jamie, Dani’s hand finds her knee and squeezes. She splays her fingers on top of it; checks on the kids, focused on their meal and allowing the adults their moment.
She hears Hannah, as she’s carrying dishes to the sink and he’s getting ready to leave. “I did try, you know.”
“I know,” Owen tells her, wrapping an arm around her waist. Hannah sinks into him, the tiniest bit: Jamie meets her eye across the kitchen and smiles. Two good people. They’ll be alright, they will.
---
It’s gardener law: by the end of October, you start to ready for winter. Means anyone who can’t survive the winter comes inside, or gets a nice little send off. Jamie always says goodbye, maybe something about knowing the plants will say it back. The only plants not to need winter warmth, ever the only exceptions, are Jamie’s moonflowers.
She trundles out late in the dark, torch in her grip under a few layers of coats and flannel shirts, following a path her feet know so well she doesn’t still trip on the roots. On instinct. So she misses two pairs of footprints, one set of Chucks, one barefoot.
Voices near her moonflowers, but familiar ones. “They’re beautiful,” says Dani, a bobbing beam of light near where her voice is.
“She’s very proud of them.” Viola, the little sneak. Jamie clicks her torch on and off once.
“Oi! What have I said about showing people out here, you reprehensible poltergeist?” Viola glances over wryly. Dani has a stunned look on her face, almost apologetic.
“Well, it wasn’t like you were going to do it.”
Jamie sniffs. “Was. When it… they’re not supposed to bloom this late in the year.”
“Welcome to Bly,” Viola says, standing from the overturned log she’s been leaning on. “Well, that’s quite enough for tonight. Would you ladies mind walking me back?” Jamie shrugs, gesturing with her torch. Viola starts out ahead, Dani falling back to walk pace and pace with Jamie. Both of their torch lights bob in front of them, highlighting stray leaves and the occasional furry animal. Viola, Jamie is pretty sure, can see in the dark.
“They’re really beautiful,” Dani says again, to Jamie’s face this time. “I can’t believe… I mean, they’re all hidden out here.”
“Well, they only bloom at night. Figure they like a bit of privacy, and I…” Jamie taps her fingernails against the metal of the torch. “I do live to serve.” Dani muffles a snort.
“She just… abducted me,” she says, gesturing to Viola with her light. “Stole me from tucking in the kids and said she had something to show me. I kinda thought she was taking me out here to kill me, but she just… she wanted to show me that.”
“She’s not even supposed to know about that,” Jamie says ruefully.
“She said they’re your pride and joy. And that it says about you…” Dani takes a deep breath. “She says you love very, very hard, and you do everything for everyone you can because you can. You may be prickly but you’re also… I think she said you’re attuned. To what we all need, and you want to make us feel better.” Dani grins. “You think you’re not good at taking care of people, but you are.”
“Did she say all that?”
“Well, I embellished a little.” They laugh quietly, breaking out of the woods and out to the lake. Viola dips her toes in, standing in the shallowest part of the water. “God, those flowers are pretty, though. Sad that they’ll end up dying.”
“Sometimes the best things aren’t meant to last forever,” Jamie offers, waving to Viola as she wades in, disappearing under the dark, murky surface. “You know, expiration dates and all that.”
“I wish you could keep them.” Dani sighs, glancing back in the direction of the moonflowers. The moon is so high, just bright enough that Jamie flicks her torch off. She settles in the just-wet grass, and Dani sits beside her.
“I think… and Hannah says this too, so don’t go thinking I’m wise or anything,” Jamie says, and Dani chuckles. “I think love and possession are two different things. You can’t love something fully if all you’re doing is thinking about keeping it all the time. You can’t… you love knowing you have to let something go, that’s what loving is. It’s doing everything you can, and… it’s knowing when to let go, when it’s good for the other thing.”
“That sounds a lot like devotion to me,” Dani says. The surface of the water ripples; Viola, breathing low and deep in sleep.
Jamie looks up to the moon. “Maybe it is.”
Dani’s hand moves across the grass and her fingers tangle with Jamie’s own. She rubs her thumb across Jamie’s knuckles. Jamie inches closer. Like two magnets polarized in the moonlight, they crawl to each other.
Dani’s lips taste like cherries, honey beeswax, and the brightest of sunlights. She digs her hands into Jamie’s hair, dislodging the beanie she’s shoved down over her curls; Jamie doesn’t care much. It’s not easy and it’s not exactly neat; Jamie’s half in Dani’s lap and she’s leaning on her arm weirdly, but she’s close and she can feel Dani pressing into every inch of her, her lips are soft and pliant and she smells…
Dani smells like the sheets in Jamie’s guest room at the manor, the ones Hannah always keeps just for her. Bergamot, lotion, the particular smell of Jamie’s sweat after a summer’s night’s sleep, a little bit flowery for the vase kept on the nightstand. Fresh and clean, Dani smells the only way Jamie’s ever associated with home.
Dani’s tongue flicks against her lips, and the moment is so heavy it makes Jamie laugh, just a little. Dani pulls away. Her eyes searching, whatever she’s looking for, she’s going to find it.
“Hi,” Dani whispers, going almost cross-eyed trying to read Jamie’s face. Jamie giggles.
“Hi there.” she rubs her thumbs over Dani’s cheekbones. At some point, she’s ended up cupping her face, feeling her wind-bit skin and warming it up by pure force of dedication. “Shall we keep kissing by the lake or go inside, maybe?”
“I dunno, I like it either way, long as I get to…” Dani leans in again, sliding her mouth seamlessly along Jamie’s. When the slightest of gasps is pulled out of her, Dani falls away. “Except I kinda think Viola might be watching us.”
A glance at the lake confirms: Viola’s head peeking out the slightest bit from the surface of the water. “Wouldn’t want to wake the beast, then,” Jamie giggles, pulling Dani up with her.
The house is a bit weird, Jamie thinks. The fireplace flickers at them as Jamie tugs Dani past, Perdita Willoughby’s portrait chuckles at the way Dani can’t stop pinning Jamie to various walls, various bannisters, for a second or two. She mutters I like you so so much into her neck and Jamie breathes the same along her collarbones, her shoulders. The house shudders underneath them like it’s exhaling in time. When Dani gets Jamie finally into her room, the door shuts behind them when they both forget to bump the latch.
Dani laughs and smiles the whole night, even through sighs and other delicious noises. Jamie curls up next to her when they pull the blankets over themselves and thinks she can hear, somewhere distantly, a music box playing. The potted ivy on Dani’s bedside table curls towards their joined bodies. Jamie falls asleep in the moonlight coming through the curtains.
The house is a bit weird, Jamie thinks. Bit weird like Dani Clayton, like myself too.
Bit weird, but it’s home.