andhiswife | (Reply)

Jessica's good at this, at offering comfort, which she supposes shouldn't surprise her. She's a mother, too. It's just that she'd put Greta more in mind of Jack's mother: not tender as much as fierce. The kind of mother who would be too busy destroying whatever had threatened or upset her children to spend too much time wiping their tears. She's both sorry and grateful to be wrong -- or wrong enough.

She's never seen tea behave quite this way before. It's a good excuse to stare into her cup, watching the dried chrysanthemum slowly bloom open in the hot water, like magic, but reassuringly benign. Jessica's words wash over her, and she nods along. It's more of an absent gesture at first -- yes, yes, things could be worse, Darrow could be a second chance. She recognizes the truth in these reassurances, but it's like recognizing that there's a fire in the hearth when you're still stuck out in a snowstorm. She knows it, but she doesn't feel it.

'Took a different path' sinks in more than the rest, though. It's a very home-like thing to say, and it surprises her a little, as if Jessica had suddenly slipped into an accent that perfectly matched her own.

"I'd be surprised if such a thing happened here," she says at length. She almost doesn't say it at all, as if Darrow would summon a Giant just to spite her. It's not impossible. "But it's still..." she pauses, frowning as she tries to get her thoughts in order. "There's nothing for me, back home. And it's only a matter of time before Darrow tires of me. So whenever I tell someone here, it's... I feel as if I've taken something from them. From you." It would have still been a lie, if any friends she left behind told themselves that she'd finally gone home to her family, but at least they could have believed it.