She was already beginning to cramp four hours later when it was time for us to brew the second half of the jam jar. She drank this just as quickly, winced, and then dropped into her bed in a miserable ball, dragging me along with her.
For the next three hours, she drifted in a light sleep, woken from time to time by cramps that racked her entire body.
What if she gave us something too strong? I thought but didn’t say. What if it kills her?
Daisy was shaking and sweating when she staggered to the bathroom. They had a modern one, thankfully, and she stayed there a long time. From the other side of the door, I heard her crying, quiet sobs that made me pace restlessly beyond. There was nothing I could do for her but wait. The toilet flushed and then flushed again, and I imagined her hand tight on the cord, knuckles white and bandaged fingertips digging into her palm. I was braced to call the doctor, but when she came out, she was pale but steady, her face and hands scrubbed under cold water.
“Come get into bed with me,” she said.
There was something exhausted in the air as we lay back down. Everything had changed or maybe only we had.
“If you’re still bleeding by tomorrow, you have to go to the doctor,” I said suddenly, remembering something that some girl had told me earlier that year. “You have to, because—”
“Hush,” Daisy said, pressing my head against her shoulder. “It’s all fine. It’s all fine now.”
The smoke hung over our heads, and Daisy drew it into a heart for me, and then a castle and a horse.
“Do you remember when we met?” she murmured dreamily. “Someday, I want you to cut me something grand, far bigger than that lion. Make me a house to live in, and a prince to come save me, and of course so many apple trees to scent the air, and a mountain to put it all on, far, far from here.”
“Of course,” I said dryly. “No big thing at all.”
We both drowsed for a while, not waking up until Mr. Fay knocked on the door, opening it just a crack.
Daisy was cut from his pattern rather than her mother’s. He was a lean spare man with hair that was as black as ink, and he had a dreaminess to his eyes as well, as if he were somehow fundamentally unmoored from the world, perpetually startled by its sharp edges and small cruelties.
“Daisy? You sent Cypress away before she could make dinner. I didn’t know you were having Jordan over for the evening.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Daisy yawned, waving her hand sleepily. “There was some tea I wanted to bring to Mother to say sorry for breaking her box, and I wanted to try brewing it myself.”
Mr. Fay snorted at his daughter, shaking his head.
“I’ll call down to the club and have them send something over.”
“Not me, I’m afraid I can’t eat anything but moonlight and rose petals tonight, Papa. But do get Jordan something, won’t you? She’s been looking after me very well, you see.”
“Of course. Jordan, will you take a chop and some potatoes?”
“Yes, sir. Thanks much.”
He closed the door behind him, leaving us in the evening darkness again, and I closed my eyes. Careful, we had to be so very careful all the time, and the reward was this, lying in the dark as if we were the same girls we had been the week before.
CHAPTER FIVE
A veil dropped down over me as I followed the butler through Gatsby’s mansion. It was as sheer as summer-weight chiffon, as light as nothing at all, and it prevented anyone we passed in the halls from seeing me or stopping me. As I walked, I idly wondered if it was simply custom and a healthy sense of self-preservation that prevented people from looking at Gatsby’s affairs too closely or if there truly was some kind of charm at work, some little figure in the butler’s pocket or the heel of his shoe.