Chapter Twenty-Eight. Daye
Daye
Daye came downstairs in her bathing suit to find Rory in the corner of the kitchen, grinning.
He was curved over the phone, one hand cradling the receiver, the other circling his ever-present coffee cup.
He smelled like nighttime and crushed stems, and Daye could vaguely remember him shaking her awake, only to tell her to go back to sleep; his hand smoothing her hair back on the pillow, the knowledge of his absence as she plunged back into the blackness of slumber.
Rory looked up, still smiling. Daye smiled back.
‘Wynne?’ she signed.
Rory shook his head. Mouthed ‘Hanna.’ To the receiver, he said, “I have to go.” A soft, unintelligible buzz answered, causing his smile to widen. “Yeah,” he said, “I will. See you next week. Bye.”
Daye looked down. A breeze came through the window. It trailed over her arms, her thighs. It felt cooler than it should be. Slick-stone sort of cool, slippery and leaden.
Rory sank back into his seat by the kitchen table, causing the papers piled on it to rustle. “Sorry,” he said. “That was Hanna. Did the sound wake you?” A pool of sunlight spread around him, limning everything in soft, warm yellow.
Daye shook her head, then came over and cuddled beside him on the bench, trying to soak in the light, the heat of skin and closeness. Even after the breeze left, the chill seemed to linger under her skin.
From this angle, she could see a smudge of pollen across the corner of Rory’s mouth.
She reached out to rub it away, but under her touch Rory startled, flinching away from her.
She could feel his smile slipping under her finger, as if she’d rubbed it away together with the pollen.
The gap between her skin and his felt somehow even colder than before.
She raised her hand slowly, showing him her yellowed fingertip.
“Oh”—Rory’s smile flickered back into place—“thanks.” His eyes flitted from her finger to her face to some point behind her. “Going swimming?”
She nodded. ‘Coming?’
Rory shook his head. “Not this time. I’m working on something in the shed.
Just took a break to make coffee, and then Hanna called.
” His eyes flicked back down to her, and the pink in his cheeks deepened.
He reached out and tugged the strap of her bathing suit back up her arm.
“Um, maybe you should check if there’s another bathing suit in the attic, one that fits better? ”
Daye shrugged, standing up. ‘Okay, I’ll check when I come back. Sure you don’t want to come?’ she gestured, trying to encompass the way the light sank into the garden outside, perfectly golden, the soft heat in the air.
“Nah, I’m good. Have fun.” He hesitated for a second, then said, “Do you want me to bring you a new one from the city when I’m there next week? You and Wynne are pretty different sizes, so it might be nice to have a bathing suit that actually fits.”
‘This one seems okay for me,’ she answered, plucking at the front of the bathing suit. ‘I don’t mind that it’s a bit loose.’
“Um, I’m not sure the straps being loose are its only problem.
It’s gotten a bit tight, too. And there’s a hole, here.
” He reached out and poked it with his finger, and Daye squirmed away, ticklish.
Rory grinned and reached to tickle her again, and she danced out of reach, an inaudible laugh bubbling inside her.
When she was safely on the other side of the table, she looked down.
‘I didn’t notice this one.’
“This one? Okay, it’s official: you need a new bathing suit, and I’m getting you one. You spend most of the summer in it, anyway.”
‘Okay,’ Daye signed. ‘I guess a new one might be nice.’
They grinned at each other, sunlight spilling like butter across the floor. A bee buzzed in the garden, soft and homey.
“How are you feeling?” Rory asked, cracking the comfortable silence like an egg.
Daye shrugged uneasily.
For almost a year now, Rory had been trying new things every season.
Last autumn, it was an abundance of herbs in the transition pile, the smell of them sharp and astringent as Rory’s voice fastened shut her eyes.
In winter, it was a profusion of winter berries and evergreens, stark against the snow, and in spring, it was wreaths of lavender and bluebells, the soft bark of cherry trees just beginning to bud.
This summer, he all but made her from hydrangeas and sweet pea blossoms. It made her skin feel flimsy, butterfly-like.
She kept wondering if this was what city-suited skin felt like, if her steps needed to be a little less sure to fit the cobblestones.
Rory’s easy smile fell, as if crumpling into itself. “What is it? What happened?”
She fidgeted. ‘I lost my footing yesterday.’
“But it’s still August. It shouldn’t have happened for weeks yet.” Rory’s voice rose higher, making it sound like a question.
Daye shrugged again, eyes on the floor.
“Did anything else happen? More stumbles? Faintness?” Rory pressed.
‘Not really,’ Daye hedged. She hated admitting it.
Hated how upset Rory got whenever the latest attempt at a solution failed.
‘I’m a little cold, maybe. And my skin is a little dry in a few places.
’ She rubbed at the inside of her elbow, where soft lines had started snaking through her skin—not yet fissures, but the preparations for ones.
Rory swore under his breath and started pacing back and forth. “What I tried should have gained you a few more weeks, not taken them. MacKillop’s flowers conjecture must be wrong,” he said, voice too low to be speaking to her. He swore again. “I knew I should have gone with Briggs’s approach.”
A basket of fruit was sitting in the middle of the table, halfway between Rory and Daye.
A dark bruise was forming on the peach, its soft skin shading from pinks and yellows to a dark muddy brown.
Daye poked it with her finger, pressing harder and harder.
Without warning, the peach’s skin broke, and her finger sunk into the cool yellow pulp. She gasped silently.
Rory stopped pacing and looked at her, eyebrows smoothing back, eyes earnest and concerned. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is all my fault. I’ll start preparing for the transition right away. How bad is it? Do you think you can hold on for a few more days?”
‘It’s not bad, really,’ she signed awkwardly, the juice from the peach sliding down her wrist. Rory seemed to track its trajectory with his eyes, throat working, before squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head.
Daye hastily wiped her fingers on her bathing suit.
‘A few more days is fine. Probably a week, too.’
It wasn’t bad, not yet. Just … uncomfortable, the sort of discomfort that seemed to steal closer every time she glanced away. Another lick of wind came through the window, sinking soft cool fingers into her skin.
“Okay, good.” Rory breathed, some of the tension loosening from his shoulders.
“I’ll start working on it now. I have another idea—one that I really think is going to work.
I was planning on trying it anyway, though I thought I’d have a couple more weeks to fine-tune it.
I think I have everything I need, but …” He trailed off, counting ingredients on his fingers, lips moving restlessly on words she couldn’t catch.
She couldn’t help but feel like she had failed him, somehow.
‘I’m sorry,’ Daye signed, but Rory was staring into some middle distance, lost in thought, and her words got lost between them. She reached out and touched his arm. ‘What can I do to help?’
“What? Oh, no, you don’t need to do anything. You should go swimming, like you planned.” He started gathering up his letter and coffee cup, movements jerky with tension.
‘Are you sure?’ She didn’t want to leave him like that. ‘I want to help. I could collect things.’
“I’m sure.” He made an effort to smile. “Go, have fun.”
As if by themselves, Daye’s feet carried her to the shadowed doorway, leaving Rory alone in the still kitchen, his bent head almost golden in the pool of butyraceous light.
In the lake, the water was startlingly cold, and the birds fluttered around her, filling the air with the sound of feathers as she swam lap after lap.