Turkish Breakfast @lipstickandsinsstuff-blog - Tumblr Blog

The Harvest

chapter eight: some things you just can't speak about title: epiphany by Taylor Swift

the one with the visit to the information

y'all where the FUCK is Shane???? I thought this was supposed to be a Shane fic????

Summary:

Daisy Mae Wilde is alone in the winter gray. With a fire in the hearth and snow falling outside, the only thing she can do is lay there and deal with the aftermath of the last nine months in the only way she knows how. Badly. With Shane Cooper a million miles away in a facility desperately clinging to sobriety, she's left to shoulder the magical burden completely alone alongside mountain of secrets no one would understand and a new cocktail of medication to keep her sane. The only people she has to keep her afloat is a brother learning to cope with a life changing disability and his boyfriend dealing with parentification and a family on the verge of crumbling. At least the world didn't stop spinning in the bottom of the mines or on that cliffside. They just don't know that there is a tiny consequence to their bad decisions and unhealthy coping mechanisms whether they get their shit together or not.

wc: 5659

ao3 link

sequel to The Valley

The third time she’d gotten up that night to pee, she checked the clock. 2:36am.

She’d gone to bed at eight, after almost falling asleep on the couch for an hour straight while Sam and Ethan watched some awful b-rated horror movie. She tried to stay awake, spend quality time with her brother and his boyfriend for once since the snow set in and showed no sign of leaving. Instead, after jolting awake for the fifth time in less than 60 entire minutes, she retreated up to her bedroom because her body was demanding a night's rest without any consideration for what she wanted or what still needed to be done.

Her body was creating an entire human from scratch, after all. So, she tried to not to feel too terrible about it.

Which was easy, given the fact that she was asleep before her head even hit the pillow.

That was six hours ago and she had been up three times to pee since and was now shuffling back from the bathroom in the dark for the third time, navigating the familiar geography of her bedroom by memory and the faint gray light coming through the curtains. Goober had not moved. He was a warm immovable shape at the right next to her spot on the bed, breathing in the deep unconscious way of a dog who had decided his job was done for the evening but still demanding cuddles. Cheesy was on the pillow above her head, snoring at a frequency she could feel more than hear.

She climbed back in, pulled the blanket up, and settled onto her side with her hand resting where it always rested now—low on her stomach, palm flat against the small firm curve that had been there for weeks but now she knew what it was and couldn’t stop touching it. Subconsciously checking and making sure.

Still there. Still going whoosh whoosh whoosh in the dark without her permission. Good. They were okay in there, and she was going to keep checking every single time.

She closed her eyes, wrapping her free arm around the dog and burying her nose into his scruff. Cheesy stretched, making one of her favorite little chirping sounds as his paw found the side of her face and he resettled practically on top of her head.

The room was quiet except for the white noise of the clock above the door tick tick ticking. The boys were asleep. The farm was quiet. Pelican Town was doing what it did at 2am in winter, which was absolutely nothing at all.

She was almost asleep.

Almost.

“You look terrible, kid.”

Daisy hadn’t ever screamed so loud in her entire life. Not in the kitchen at 13. Not at her cheating ex when she caught him and another woman in their bed. Not when she died in the mines. She shot up in bed, pulling her blanket close to her chest and bringing up her knees in an attempt to shield her stomach.

Goober and Cheesy both shot off the bed. The cat darted under it in an attempt to hide from the intruder as his canine brother barked the most aggressive sound Daisy had ever heard from an animal.

With her heart pounding so roughly against her ribcage she could feel it in her fingertips, her eyes shot over to the spot that Goober was barking at. There. sitting in the chair in the corner of her bedroom that she used exclusively as a surface for clothes she wore but weren’t dirty and she couldn’t put away—

Mr Qi.

Sitting in her chair. In her bedroom. At 2am. With his hands folded in his lap and his expression carrying that aggravating quality it always had—like he already knew everything that was about to happen and found it faintly interesting and genuinely amusing.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!” She screeched.

Yet, before any sort of excuse could be given by the otherworldly man, the door slammed open. Bouncing off the wall, most definitely leaving a hole right where the doorknob hit the plaster.

With absolutely zero consideration for any other person in a ten mile radius, Ethan ducked under the doorway. The absurdly tall man ducked beneath the doorway out of pure muscle memory, practically falling into the room. One arm was strapped to his chest in his sling, the other brandishing a Gridball trophy so tightly above his head that his knuckles were white.

Absurdly, Daisy’s brain held onto the fact that she recognized it. Breathing through the residual terror, she thought about the trophy shelf on the wall right next to his bedside. He grabbed the biggest one. A solid metal trophy from the last season he played—quarterback of the year. A solid gold gridball held up by another solid beam. Heavy enough to do damage. Heavy enough to bludgeon whatever poor son of a bitch made his pregnant sister scream like that in the middle of the night.

His eyes found his sister’s frame in the dark immediately. Legs pulled up to protect the baby inside of her out of pure instinct. Breathing, though somewhat irregularly. Alive and well and completely, utterly fine. With his jaw set and chest heaving, his eyes scanned the room slowly after taking inventory of her only to stop as soon as they landed on the man at the other side of the room.

He stopped. Completely frozen as his set jaw twitched and his chest stuttered for a single moment as his brain processed exactly what he was looking at.

A man, yes. In his sister’s room at almost three in the morning. Which was already wrong. There had not been a man in her room when he’d gone to bed and checked on her. Passed out with her arm around the dog and the cat curled around her head.

No. This was a man. Who was blue.

Fucking blue?

Not poorly lit. Not a trick of the 2am dark or eyes that were too tired. The man sitting in his sister's laundry chair with his hands folded in his lap was fucking blue in a way that had nothing to do with lighting and everything to do with… with whatever he was. Dark clothes that seemed to absorb the light around them and give back something that glittered faintly, like looking at the sky between stars. A constellation that moved lazily through the night sky. And a wide brimmed hat with the same dark absorption of light. And eyes—when they moved to find Ethan's face—that were covered by purple sunglasses. Not those pretentious polarized sun glasses owned by every cool guy wannabe. They seemed to glow faintly purple in the dark, show a version of yourself you never wanted to meet.

He was staring face to face at a blue man and the hurt, weak version of himself he was trapped in for the rest of his life.

“What,” He growled, grip adjusting on the trophy like he was ready to start swinging, “the fuck is going on?”

“Ethan—” Daisy began, finally moving on the bed to reach out for him.

“No,” He interrupted her calmly. Too calmly. He didn't look at her. Couldn't look away from the man in the chair who was blue and glowing and sitting there like this was simply where he was right now and he had no opinions about it. "No, just— give me a second."

The man in the chair gave him a second.

Which was somehow worse than anything else he could’ve done.

"Who are you?" Ethan growled.

"Mr. Qi," the man schmoozed. Like that was a complete answer. He reached out a hand. Blue, long and boney fingers and a palm that looked too soft. Ethan just stared at it.

"Why are you in my sister's bedroom?"

"I wanted a conversation."

"At two thirty in the morning."

"Time is somewhat relative to me."

Ethan's jaw tightened. He looked at Daisy then, finally, the full force of his attention swinging toward her. "You're okay," he said. Not a question in the slightest.

"I'm okay," she echoed.

"He didn't—"

"No. He’s not going to hurt me.”

He held her gaze for a moment. Reading her the way he'd been reading her their whole lives, looking for the thing underneath the thing she was saying. Found something complicated. Something that looked like this wasn't entirely a surprise to her.

"You know him?" He asked.

Her lips pressed together in a thin line.

"Daisy Mae." His voice dropped. The quiet version of it, which was worse than the loud one or the low growl. "You know him."

"It's complicated—"

"He's in your bedroom!"

"I know where he is—"

"He's blue, Daisy!"

"I'm aware that he's blue—"

"He's sitting in your chair and he's GLOWING and you're telling me it's complicated—"

"Ethan, I will explain everything, just not right now—"

"RIGHT NOW SEEMS LIKE A GREAT TIME!"

"I'm eleven weeks pregnant and it's two thirty in the morning and I've already been up three times to pee and I just got my heart rate down from screaming—" her voice cracked slightly on the last word, not from upset but from sheer exhaustion, and that cracked something in him too, she could see it—the anger finding its ceiling and bumping against it. "Please," she said. Quieter. "Tomorrow. I promise. Everything."

Sam appeared in the doorway behind him. Before he could start swinging or yelling or any other worse possibility this man could’ve pulled out of left field.

The shorter man, wearing a confused and half asleep expression accompanied by flattened hair and pajama pants too low on his hips that were not his own, took in the room. At Daisy halfway across the bed reaching for her brother. At Ethan with the trophy still tightly in his grasp. At Qi sitting in the chair reserved for mostly clean laundry. His face drained of all color, eyes widening to a degree Daisy had never seen across this incredibly unserious man’s face.

Ethan caught it. He turned to look at Sam properly—at that terrified expression. "You know who this is," he accused, voice low.

Sam's jaw worked as he tried to find a proper answer. "Yeah."

"How."

"It's—"

"Samson."

"It's a long story," Sam rushed. "And it's— Daisy should tell you. It's her—"

"How long have you known?"

Sam looked at Daisy. Daisy looked at the blanket across her knees.

The silence answered the question better than any excuse ever could.

Ethan looked at the ceiling, just for a moment. Just long enough to decide what to do with that. His hand was still on the trophy, knuckles white. His arm in the sling was just… well, there. Strapped to his chest was the bad one, the one that didn't work right anymore, hanging like a flag at half mast. He was still not entirely convinced he didn’t have to bash the blue man’s skull in.

“What do you want from my sister?” Ethan finally demanded after a moment of utter silence.

“At the moment, it doesn’t concern you,” Mr Qi said, words steady and even.

Daisy watched as her brother adjusted the weight of the trophy in his hand. She wasn’t entirely convinced he wasn’t about to throw it.

“No,” Ethan demanded through clenched teeth. “What the fuck do you want with my sister. Now.”

Qi let out a laugh low in his chest. A genuinely amused rumble that echoed through the dim lit room. “Your sister was offered a job and I am here looking for an answer.”

Ethan wasn’t satisfied with that, clearly. Not by the way he stepped further into the room until Sam reached to put a hand on his bad shoulder. “E,” Sam pleaded. “Go to bed, baby. Please.”

Ethan didn’t move. Of course he didn’t. His eyes stayed focused on the blue man in the corner of his sister’s room with his boyfriend's hand on the shoulder that caused him nothing but grief. And the blue man stayed exactly where he was. Like this was just a normal occurrence for the middle of the night on a weekday.

“A job,” Ethan repeated flatly.

“Yes. A job.”

“For my sister.”

“For your sister,” Qi confirmed.

Ethan looked at her with hesitant eyes. She stared back with a familiar gaze, one that had gotten her into trouble approximately as often as it had gotten her out of it. The one he'd never quite been able to say no to. He exhaled through his nose. Long. Slow. Deliberate. After a single moment of a stare off between the two, he deliberately set the trophy down on the edge of her dresser, eyes finding the extraterrestrial man for a beat before ducking out of the room.

It felt easy. Too easy, the way he left.

Sam, however, lingered.

He looked at Qi with an expression that was complicated and tired, something that she hadn’t seen on him more than once or twice before. All because of recent situations she felt terrible he was even involved in. Then that gaze shifted over to Daisy, softening. "You good?" He asked.

"Yeah," she deflected. "Go back to bed, Sam."

He nodded. Looked at Qi one more time—the look of someone wanting to say something and deciding against it. Then he left, pulling the door mostly closed behind him.

The bedroom was quiet.

Daisy and Qi looked at each other across the room.

"You could have knocked," she mumbled, falling back to sit properly on the bed.

"I could have," Qi agreed.

“You scared the shit out of me.”

“I’m very aware.”

“My brother almost killed you.”

“Indeed.”

Goober had stopped barking long ago. He was standing at the foot of the bed between Daisy and Qi, hackles still up, tail low—the posture of a dog who wasn't sure if this was a threat anymore but wasn't ready to decide it wasn't.

After a long moment of consideration, Goober crossed the room, stopping directly in front of Qi's chair. The dog looked up at this man who had appeared in the dark and scared his mother half to death and made the other humans upset and decided, apparently, after careful consideration—

His tail started wagging.

Goober put his head in Qi's lap without a second thought. Qi put his hand on Goober's head with the cocky composure of a man who had been waiting for this outcome.

Daisy looked at Qi. At her mostly clean laundry on the floor. At the glowing purple eyes and the sparkly dark clothes and the hat and the whole impossible fact of him sitting in her bedroom at 2:30am like it was simply where he was.

"…do you want coffee?" She asked. "Or cookies. I have cookies." A pause. "They're from store bought dough, though. I've been tired."

She almost felt like she was tattling on herself at the confession. That, despite wanting a sweet treat, she couldn’t even bring herself to stand at the counter and measure ingredients she knew by heart.

Qi regarded her for a moment with the expression of a man who had existed for a very long time and had not expected this particular turn of events. “If that’s what you need to have this conversation, then lead the way, kid.”

.・✫・゜・。..・✫・゜・。

The farmhouse kitchen at almost three in the morning was something Daisy had known all too well. A particular, silent quality that didn’t deserve to be stepped into, and yet time and time again she ended up right where she was. The yellow light above the stove she always left on because the dark felt too complete without it, casting everything in something warm and something that felt utterly unreal.

Daisy moved through it the way she moved through everything lately—on autopilot, body doing the familiar things while her brain tried to catch up with the evening. Filled the carafe. Got two mugs from the cabinet. The cookies were in the tin on the counter. Store bought sugar cookie dough, pre-sliced, baked two days ago because she'd wanted something sweet and couldn't summon the energy for anything that required her to be standing up for longer than fifteen minutes. She put them on one of her grandparents' old plates and carried them to the table.

Qi sat down across from her like he'd done it before. Like the farmhouse kitchen table was simply where he was right now and the three in the morning of it was of no particular relevance to him. He just sat and watched her mindlessly do the things around her kitchen that she’d done a million times before and would do a million times after.

She put a mug in front of him and set the creamer and sugar on the table between them—hazelnut, because that's what she’d been craving—and sat down with her own mug and watched him, without comment, add a significant amount of both.

An obscene amount of hazelnut creamer. Two heaping spoonfuls of sugar.

She looked at the cookies. She’d put sprinkles on them. Red and green, in preparation for Winter Star just around the corner. She wanted to feel like she’d done something, even if that something was just pouring the sprinkles straight from the container onto the fresh out the oven cookies. She watched as Mr Qi picked one up and ate it with the same composure he did everything else.

She wrapped her hands around her own mug of too sweet coffee and decided not to address any of it.

"My family," she started without preamble. Because it was nearly three in the morning and she was exhausted and her eyes were already doing the thing where they burned for no reason and she was not going to think about why. "You said you'd been watching my family for a long time. I want to know what that means. Specifically."

Qi set his cookie down. Folded his hands on the table. The gesture of someone who had decided to give her something real, something with substance that she didn’t have to do mental gymnastics to figure out when it finally became relevant.

"Your grandfather farmed this land for forty years," he began. "He had what you have. A version of it. Oriented outward, toward the valley and the things that live in it. The magical ecosystem of this place responded to him. The Junimos trusted him before they trusted anyone else in a generation." He paused. "He didn't know what it was. He just knew the land felt different than anywhere else he'd ever been. That it gave back what he put in." Another pause. "You've felt that."

She had. Since the first morning she'd stood in the field and put her hands in the soil. She'd thought it was grief processing. She'd thought it was finally having somewhere to put herself.

"And Nan?" She urged.

"His muse." He picked up his coffee. "Which people understood as a romantic notion. It was also a functional one. She had an ability to draw out and stabilize what he carried. To make it workable rather than overwhelming. What she gave him was real and practical and part of why he could do what he did for forty years without it consuming him. Something that lasted long after her death, simply because on a cosmic level, she was still with him." He looked at her steadily. "She was as much a part of this as he was. She just didn't know the name for her part either."

Daisy turned her mug in her hands. The warmth of it spread into her palms.

"My mom," she whispered.

The kitchen went quiet in a different way. Not the comfortable quiet of a house at night. Something with more weight in it. She kept her eyes on the mug, kept her face as still as she could manage. The burning behind her eyes was getting worse and she was not going to do anything about that. The burn was simply a part of her now, with a tiny explanation written in static attached to the refrigerator with a strawberry shaped magnet.

"Lucille," Qi said her name carefully.

"She had it," Daisy confirmed, eyes focused on the steaming coffee in her mug.

"Yes." Simply. Without softening it or inflating it. "A different version than yours or your grandfather's. Oriented inward. Toward human emotional experience. She felt things. Other people's things, her own things. All with a volume and a specificity that had no natural off switch." He looked at his coffee. "She didn't know what it was. Nobody told her. She thought she was broken."

The burning was worse. She pressed her lips together and breathed through her nose as she kept her eyes on the mug.

"She wasn't," Qi clarified with a confident certainty. "She was carrying something that was never named for her. Something that could have been understood and worked with, if anyone had known to name it." He paused. "That's different from being broken. Even if the outcome was the same."

A tear dropped onto the back of her hand. She didn't acknowledge it. Wiped it away with her sleeve and picked up the mug and took a sip and looked at the cookie plate. "Ethan has it," she whispered. "The same version she had."

"Yes."

"He's had it his whole life and we thought it was just—" she stopped, sucking in a painful breath against the burn. "We thought it was just him being sensitive and too much." She looked up. "He needs to know it's real. That it has an actual explanation that isn’t… that isn’t what our dad called it. That it doesn't mean he's—" she stopped again.

"Tell him," Qi interrupted. "That's yours to give. Not mine."

She nodded. Added it to the growing list of things that needed to happen. Looked back at the table.

"And my version. You said it's the strongest in the line."

"The strongest I've seen," he said without flattery. Just true accuracy. "Oriented outward like your grandfather's but further. Broader. The magical beings in this valley don't just respond to you. They attach. You've felt it without having words for it."

She thought about the Junimos. The way they'd come to the community center like they'd been expecting her specifically, how they didn’t give Shane their bundles in the years he’d known them before her. The way the valley felt different in her hands than she'd ever been able to explain.

"The community center.”

"Was always going to be you. Not anyone else. Not in the way it happened." He held her gaze. "You arrived in March and the valley recognized something it had been waiting for."

She sat with that. The discomfort of finding out that something you thought you chose had also chosen you.

"Pop is buried on this property."

"I know."

"That's not a coincidence."

"Very little is," Qi said calmly. He reached for another cookie.

She watched him eat it. With his coffee and hazelnut creamer and two heaping spoonfuls of sugars. That store bought dough and sprinkles that made her feel less useless. The most powerful magical being she would probably ever meet, eating a pre-sliced sugar cookie at her kitchen table at 3am like it was a normal thing to do.

"Shane," she finally said, the question that had been clawing at her ribs and up her throat since before shit hit the fan finally managing to come out to someone who might have an answer.

He just looked at her.

"Rasmodius." The word landed the way it always did when she said it in her head—with edges, with the dreaded weight of everything that name carried. "Is Shane his son?"

The kitchen stayed very quiet after her words.

"What do you think?" Qi asked.

"I think yes." She held his gaze. "I've thought yes for months. I need to know if I'm right."

He held her gaze for a long moment. Then he made a sound. Low, in the back of his throat. Noncommittal in a way that was not noncommittal at all.

"That's confirmation!” She exclaimed, pushing her chair back and slamming a hand against the table.

"That's a sound."

"It’s confirmation and you know it!"

"It's an acknowledgment that you asked a question."

"You're doing the thing," she accsued, leaning back against the chair. "The thing where you give me the shape of an answer without the answer itself. It’s really annoying, you know.”

"I'm giving you what I can give you tonight."

"Then give me more!"

"Daisy," he said quietly. Not a reprimand. Just her name, and the weight he put into everything that apparently meant more than he was leading on. Trying to calm the situation before it got out of hand. Daisy’s cheeks burned at the way it felt like a parent reprimanding their child for getting too excited about something. "Some things aren't mine to confirm. They belong to other people's stories. Stories that will come to you." He looked at her steadily. "What I can tell you is that you're not wrong to think what you're thinking."

She stared at him. At the purple glasses and the blue of him and the hazelnut creamer still on the table between them. At the cookie in his hand and the constellations continuing to move lazily against his suit. All of a sudden, this all felt ridiculous. Like a fever dream or a psychosis-induced hallucination.

"I'm scared," she finally said, her tone flat and factual. "He's in rehab. He's getting better. He's doing the work and I just—" she pressed her hand flat against the table. "If he finds out about Rasmodius when he gets out, I'm scared of what it does to him. I just got him somewhere safe. I watched them take him in the ambulance and I drove home in the rain and I have been counting the days until I can sit across from him and now I already have to tell him about the baby and I can't put that on him too, I can't be the reason he—"

"He's not as in the dark as you think," Qi interrupted.

She went completely still, fist balling up against the wood grain of the table. She looked at him. "What?”

Qi picked up his coffee. Took a sip. Looked at her over the rim of it with that expression—the one that meant he had said the thing he had decided to say and had no intention of going further.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that he is not as in the dark as you think."

"What does that mean!?”

"It means," he repeated patiently, "that he is not as in the dark as you think."

"That's the same sentence!"

"It is."

"You just repeated the same sentence at me!"

"Yes."

"That is not an answer and you know it!"

"It's more of an answer than you had thirty seconds ago," he deflected. Entirely unrepentant. "You'll understand it when you see him."

She stared at him. At the complete and total serenity of him. At the hazelnut creamer. At the store bought cookie in his hand. At the purple glasses that showed you something you didn't want to see.

She picked up a cookie and ate it in silence with pointed frustration. Qi watched this happen. She chewed. Swallowed. Looked at the table.

"The job. The steward thing. What would I actually do? If I said yes," she finally asked. The thing she should’ve asked when he proposed it during the fair, and yet fell away like most things did at that point. Overshadowed by the stormcloud pressing behind her eyes and dampening every single thing swirling through her mind.

"What you've been doing,” he said simply.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You keep saying that."

"Because it keeps being accurate."

"It's not an answer."

"You fixed the community center. You went into the mines. The Junimos found you before you had any reason to find them. The valley has been telling you what it needs since the day you arrived. You've been listening without knowing you were listening." He looked at her steadily. "That's the job. Being present. Paying attention. Acting when something calls."

"But what does that look like," she pressed. "On a Monday morning. Specifically. Do you give me a list? Do I report to someone? Is there—"

"It'll come to you," he interrupted before taking another bite of a cookie.

She stared at him with wide eyes. "That's—"

"The most accurate answer I have." He picked up his coffee completely unbothered by her death stare.

"You're infuriating!" She exclaimed.

"I've been told," he chuckled, like this was neither surprising nor particularly concerning to him. “By you, specifically. And your grandfather.”

She looked at the window. At the December dark pressing against the glass. At the snow still falling outside in the quiet of the farm.

"My child," she whispered, her hand falling to her stomach. She looked back at him. "Whatever I decide. Whatever happens. I need you to tell me they're not part of this. That they're safe. That this—" she gestured vaguely at the kitchen, at him, at all of it "—doesn't follow them."

Qi set his mug down. He looked at her with the particular attention of someone about to say something they meant completely without any sort of flourish.

"The valley doesn't want your child. It wants you. Those are different things." He held her gaze, steady and unblinking. "Your child is not a bargaining piece. Not a legacy continuation. Not an extension of what I'm asking of you. Whatever you decide, they are outside of it." A pause. "That's not a dressed up promise. It's just true."

She looked at him. Looking for the seam in it. The place where it was more complicated than it sounded. She didn't find one. "Okay," she murmured. "Okay."

She looked down at the table. At her hand resting there. At the small, sprinkle covered cookies between them that were almost gone.

Another tear dropped onto the back of her hand. She didn't wipe this one away, just looked at it for a second. She was in her first trimester of a completely unplanned pregnancy. It was 3am. The most powerful being in the valley was sitting across from her eating store bought cookies with hazelnut creamer and confirming things she'd already suspected while systematically refusing to confirm the thing she most needed confirmed.

"Why did you really come tonight?" she asked, wiping the back of her hand against her cheek. "And I want the real answer. Not the roundabout."

Qi was quiet for a moment.

"Because the valley is getting louder, and you're the only one who can hear it properly. And I needed to know if you were listening." He looked at her. "You are. Even now. Even in the middle of all of this." He glanced at her stomach. Back at her face. "You're still listening."

She looked at the window again.

"I haven't decided anything," she let out a watery laugh.

"I know."

"I might say no."

"You might."

"Would you tell me if I was making the wrong choice?" Suddenly, she was looking at him with the most serious expression he’d seen from anyone in her lineage.

He considered this for a moment, examining the mug in his hands. Strawberry print, fading away from too many cycles through the dishwasher despite the fact that it was not dishwasher safe. "I'd tell you what I know," he finally answered. "What you do with it is yours."

She nodded. Picked up her mug. Found it had gone lukewarm while they were talking and drank it anyway.

"You should go," she finally said, pushing herself up as she grabbed the now empty plate of cookies and plastic creamer container. "I have to be up in four hours."

"You'll sleep in," he said with absolute certainty.

She looked up at him, watching as his teeth practically glowed white against the warm stove light. His gums were even more blood red than she remembered from the first time seeing them. It was unnerving, yes, yet she didn’t let it phase her. She just turned toward the sink.

"I have things to do,” she insisted.

"The young Mullner kid will come early to tend to the farm. You’ll feel sick and stay in bed. I know.” He dismissed her with a wave of his hand, standing up to bring his mug over to the sink.

She stared up at him. Tried not to think too hard about how tall he was. Taller than Ethan. Taller than any man she’d ever seen. "How do you—"

"Goodnight, kid," he said.

"I'm twenty six years old and my name is Daisy Mae, pick one—"

But the kitchen was empty. The mug was still in the sink where he'd left it. The creamer in her hand. The sugar in the middle of the table. The cookie plate with nothing left on it but crumbs. Goober blinking up at her from where he'd been sitting at her feet the whole time, tail moving slowly.

She sat at the counter for a long moment.

"He's not as in the dark as you think," she whispered to the empty kitchen. The kitchen said nothing back, of course.

She rinsed the mugs. Put the creamer away. Turned off the light above the stove for the first time since she moved in. Went back up the stairs in the dark, hitting the last step in the same spot it always creaked.

Got back into bed. Pulled the blanket up. Put her hand on her stomach.

The farm was quiet. Pelican Town was quiet. The snow was still falling outside the window in the December dark.

She lay there for a long time.

She was listening.

She just hadn't decided what to do about it yet.