Chapter Twenty-One. Daye
Daye
Daye was sitting in the back garden when she heard the footsteps coming down the road.
For a moment she stilled, a held breath—the footsteps couldn’t be Mrs. Matthews, whom Daye could hear moving in the kitchen, or the postman’s, since it was Tuesday, and it surely couldn’t be Wynne’s, so—
Joy was a buoyant, leaping thing inside her, making her legs speed up as she rounded the house, making her lips arc up, up in a smile. Rory, back from the city two days early. Rory, here, now.
She was almost to the gate now, and she was running, her fingers already sketching ‘You’re back’ and ‘I missed you’ in the air, as if she could hang the words like cobwebs between them, freeing up her hands to wrap around Rory and hold him close.
And then the gate was opening and—not Rory, Daye realized, feet slip-skidding on the frozen ground as she came to a stop mere inches from the stranger’s chest.
Daye drew in a sharp breath. Even with winter still young in her limbs—too young to stumble—she felt unsteady. A person! A boy, about a head taller than Rory. A boy she had never met before.
She drank it in: hands and chin and hair the color of autumn leaves, the texture of skin and the faint smell of wet wool and sugar and straw. All of it new, all of it dropping inside her like coins into a pool, creating ripples.
“Well, hello.” The words came with a smile that Daye had to crane her head up to see, making her realize just how close she was standing.
She took a hasty step back.
The boy’s smile grew larger. “Sorry for startling you. You okay?”
Daye nodded hesitantly, searching his face.
There was something faintly familiar about him.
Only this couldn’t be right, since she hadn’t met anyone other than Rory and Wynne and Mrs. Matthews and Mr. Benson and the mailman in years.
Not since Wynne’s friends came to visit four summers ago.
And before that, when a person came to fix the fireplace.
“You must be a friend of”—the boy screwed up his lips—“Wynne? No,” he said, registering the instinctual shake of Daye’s head. “So, the younger one? Uh … Rury?”
Daye nodded again, the movement surer. This, she realized, this was a conversation.
The thought made a smile blossom on her face, made that giddy, leaping lightness settle back into her limbs.
She was having a conversation. With a stranger.
She had never had a conversation with anyone other than Rory before.
She couldn’t wait to tell Rory about this when he got back.
“I’m Owen,” the stranger continued, his smile spreading to mirror her own.
“I’m here to drop off something for my aunt—she’s the housekeeper here, Mrs. Matthews.
” He flourished the white box he was holding in his hands, then leaned against the gate in a way that belied any intention of moving.
“You know, you look a bit familiar. Have we met before?”
But Daye could barely register his words.
Instead, all she could hear was a younger, suppler version of the same voice saying, “I’m Owen.
My aunt, Mrs. Matthews, is your housekeeper.
” All she could feel was his hand grabbing her wrist, the weight of it as he turned her palm this way and that, examining her skin as if he was looking for ways to unravel it.
For a moment, it was as if she was back in the village—surrounded by a wall of lips and teeth and reaching hands. The tug of fingers in her hair, pulling. The taste of fear in her mouth, ashy and dry.
Owen was still looking at her, his smile even larger, all teeth. She could barely suppress a flinch, remembering what happened when she spoke to Rory, back then. How it made the village kids stop smiling. How it made them crowd closer, reaching and shouting and—
She shook her head as if the memories were summer gnats she could disperse.
Owen didn’t seem to notice her mounting dread.
“Yeah, I figured. I would have remembered meeting you.” He slouched deeper into the gate.
“You know, you should come by the village sometime before you leave. I could show you around.” His eyes traveled from her face downward, snagging on her collarbone, the dip of her waist, so much like the way he’d examined her skin back then—like he was looking for ways to denude her, to peel back her skin and uncover what lay beneath. “Wait, how old are you, anyway?”
At her sides, Daye’s hands opened and clenched. No trace of buoyancy remained inside her. Instead, it felt as if her lungs were filling with leaf litter, with snow, becoming heavy and breathless and taut. There was no way for her to answer. Not without—
The ashy taste in her mouth was back—not the shadowy memory of one, but a physical thing, sitting heavy on her tongue.
The silence stretched and stretched. A crease appeared between Owen’s eyes. Then, abruptly, the smile disappeared from his face, as if sucked away, leaving behind only thinned lips.
Daye took a step back.
“So you’re that one.” A moment ago, his voice had seemed to wheedle and cajole, an outstretched hand.
Now he seemed to spit the words at the ground between them, like cherry pits.
“The plaything.” He sucked at his teeth.
“Though I’ll give them this, you are pretty.
Do you belong only to the younger one, or do he and his sister share?
” His voice was loud enough now to drown the birdsong, as loud as the overlapping voices in her memory.
Or was it only the feeling of danger, of panic bubbling up, that made his voice ring and echo?
She took another step back, watching his hands. The way they twitched at his side, half raised, ready to—
“Owen, is that you? What are you doing here?” Mrs. Matthews called out. Daye took two more steps back, not stopping until her feet found the path to the back garden.
Owen’s hand, which moments ago had hesitated on the verge of grabbing, fell. “Mom sent me with this.” He raised the package with his other hand, his eyes still on Daye, his lips still curled tight.
“Well, leave that thing alone and come give it to me then.” Mrs. Matthews made a tutting sound, proceeding to suggest tea, a sandwich, a fresh cake.
Their voices moved into the house, words rising and falling, indistinct, for one minute, two, while Daye stood poised, ready to dart away without quite being able to tell what it was she should dart away from.
And then the stairs creaked again, and Owen ambled toward the gate, a slice of cake in his hand.
He didn’t look her way once, not even when he passed right by her. It was like she wasn’t there at all.
It took a while for her hands to stop shaking. And when Rory came back, two days later, she never did tell him about her conversation after all.