Chapter Eighteen. Rory
Rory
On his second visit to the city, Rory couldn’t sleep.
He should have been used to it by now, after a year of being hurled out of sleep, sweat-soaked and out of breath.
But this was a different sort of sleeplessness.
He kept tossing and turning, his eyes refusing to stay shut and his limbs to stay still.
On the street outside, people were shouting and slurring and singing.
The door of the pub a few houses down kept opening and closing, sending a muted roar spilling into the night.
Cars kept churning up and down the street, their headlights traveling across the ceiling.
But even without all these, Rory doubted he could have fallen asleep.
His mind kept replaying all the thousand interactions he’d had that day: with the girl at the stationery store and the man at the sandwich cart; with Mrs. Finnebone and the other librarians—so kind, so full of words and questions; with the floods of people streaming up and down the university halls and city streets, tossing sorrys and thank yous as if it was so easy, knowing the right thing to say.
Rory never knew the right thing to say to them, not once.
There seemed to be a trick to it, some set of cues he kept missing.
It riddled every conversation with stammering silences and reddening cheeks.
All these kind, expectant smiles aimed his way.
God. When that librarian tried to ask him why he was researching Blodeuwedds—
Rory groaned and turned around, burying his face in the pillow.
His mind kept whirling, going over the list of books he had to read, suggesting new sections he should add to his brand-new notebook, counting the questions he needed to find answers for and getting a different number each time.
Rory squeezed his eyes shut and tried to imagine Daye’s steady breath beside him, the slight creak of the bed as she turned in her sleep.
Only instead, he kept seeing night-gilded limbs flung out of her blanket.
How the small of her back looked when her nightshirt rode up, so much more naked than when they were both in their bathing suits.
How it felt to find out she slept in his bed when he was away.
Things he had never thought about before the last few months. Things he had no business imagining.
With a second, disgusted groan, Rory pushed back the covers and flung himself out of bed.
The living room was night-dim, full of small lights that were invisible during the daytime.
“Can’t sleep?” Wynne’s voice came from the sofa. A small table lamp cast a pool of light into her lap, leaving the rest of her streaked with shadows. A magazine lay face down beside her like a forgotten pet, a half-empty glass balancing precariously on its cover.
Rory started, then shrugged. “It’s the noise.”
“Yeah, I remember that from the first week I spent here.” She chuckled, a scattered, hazy sound.
“Give it a few days. You’ll stop noticing it before you know it.
Now, every time I come back to the country house, I’m shocked by how loud it is there.
Those fucking crickets.” She groaned. “The city actually sounds quiet by comparison.”
Rory gave her a skeptical look. “How could that sound quiet?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the street, where a loud burst of sound announced the pub door opening again.
“You’ll see.” She gave him one of her enigmatic, I-know-everything-because-I’m-so-much-older smiles.
Rory was too tired to get annoyed. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
“I’m … considering,” she said, vowels slipping and sliding like liquid sloshing in a glass.
“Considering what?”
“Do you know what day it is today?” she asked, ignoring his question. Now he could see that there was something in her hands, something flat that she was turning over and over again. “It’s October twenty-second,” she continued without waiting for him to answer.
Rory had to rifle through several mental boxes before he realized what she meant. “Mom’s birthday?”
“Mom’s birthday,” she confirmed. “I’m considering sending a card. You know, like they used to. In honor of tradition and all.”
“Used to?” Rory asked, and immediately wanted to clutch at the words, to reel them back, unnoticed. But it was too late.
Wynne’s fingers stilled on the card. “So I take it they haven’t stopped for you?”
Rory toed the carpet. “I still get them,” he admitted quietly. “Every February.”
“Ha!” Wynne barked a sound that was more a crow than a laugh, making the glass balanced beside her teeter.
“I guess they decided that they’re only obliged to send them until we turn twenty-one.
Or maybe mine was just lost in the mail.
” She laughed again, a harsh, angular noise, and flicked the card onto the coffee table.
It was still in its plastic sleeve, the lamplight reflecting from it obscuring everything but the letters H and B, and a small cheery bear waving from the corner.
Rory watched as Wynne grabbed her glass and drained it in one long gulp.
“Sorry,” he said quietly.
“Not your fault.”
The pub door down the street opened and closed, sending a wave of noise washing into the living room, then plunging the room back into silence.
“Have you …” he started. Swallowed. Started again. “Have you seen them lately?”
Wynne looked at the glass in her hand like she wished it was still full.
“Not in a while.” She grimaced. “I see Dad from time to time, usually when I need more money than I have in my monthly funds. But it’s easier talking to his secretary.
Faster, too. And Mom … Last I heard, she’d moved to the continent with her new husband.
” She laughed again, a sound like broken glass.
“Well, I guess that’s that with the birthday card scheme. ”
“Oh.” Rory hadn’t seen either of them in years.
Enough that his memories were hazy, disjointed things: the feel of a hand on his shoulder, pulling him to a stop; the sharp scent of jasmine; the softness of his mother’s coat; and the smudged noisiness of dinner parties.
He could no longer recall their features as they looked at him, only the way they looked in photos, smiles practiced and distant.
But still, he expected that Wynne, at least …
He took a deep breath, then asked, small and hushed, “Do you know what happened? Why they just … stopped coming?” He didn’t think he could have asked if not for the darkness and the silence and the nighttime all around them.
Instead of answering, Wynne heaved herself up and went to the kitchen with her empty glass. She filled it to the brim, then looked back at Rory appraisingly and poured another.
“Here.” She shoved the glass into his hand.
“What’s that?” Rory asked. It smelled sour and strange.
“That’s what I need if we’re having this conversation right now. Drink up. If nothing else, it’ll help you fall asleep.” She made a shooing motion.
Rory took a sip. The liquid scraped down his throat, bitter and harsh and vile, and he sputtered out a cough. Wynne chuckled.
“What is this?” he asked, mouth screwed.
“Wine.” She was still laughing. “It gets better, I promise. It grows on you, like the noises in the city.”
Rory aimed a skeptical look at Wynne, then at the dark liquid. Still, having the glass in his hand at least gave him something to do as he waited for Wynne to answer.
“Fuck.” Wynne took a long swallow from her glass, her throat bobbing.
“There’s really not a lot to say. Do you remember when they decided to get a divorce?
” She sighed as Rory shook his head. “Of course you wouldn’t.
You were, like, six. Anyway, they spent months fighting over who’d get us.
Epic fights, shouts and all.” Her teeth flashed in a harsh smile.
“It took me a while to figure out that they were fighting because neither of them wanted to be responsible for us. In the end, I think they just decided that neither of them had to.”
Wynne’s mouth was an angry slash now, and there was a sheen to her eyes that looked very much like unspilled tears.
“Are you okay?” Rory asked, unsure if he should be reaching for her or pretending he hadn’t seen it.
Wynne seemed to spool back into herself. She rubbed her eye as if there was something in it, then gave him a wry smile. “Sure. Sorry, it still pisses me off. Even, God, almost a decade later.”
Rory groped for anger, like fishing for shells at the bottom of the lake, but mostly he came up with slivers of old, worn loneliness and fistfuls of fear. That it could happen again. That more people could go tipping out of his life without warning. Like his parents had. Like Wynne.
I have Daye, he reminded himself. And nothing will happen to her. I won’t let it.
Wynne took another swallow off her glass. “Really, it’s old news by now, right?”
Rory exhaled softly. “Yeah,” he answered. “It is.”
Outside, another blare of noise flared and sputtered.
Rory placed his glass, still mostly full, on the coffee table. “I think I’ll go to sleep now. You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “I’ll probably go to bed soon, too. Good night, Rory.”
“Good night.”
Rory retreated to the guest room, leaving Wynne staring out the window, glass halfway to her lips. But it was a long, long time before he fell asleep.