The morning shift at the cannery ended at seven and Daniel was at Granny’s by seven-fourteen because the diner was warm and the coffee was wrong and both of these things had become a routine, and routines were the only things holding his two lives together.
Dan-the-cannery had routines.
Daniel Ashford had observations.
They were sharing a body and a coat and a growing ledger of names written on the inside of a wool lining, and the arrangement wasn’t working well but it was working, and that was enough.
He reached for the cream at the same time as a stranger.
The stranger was a man in his forties with a coat that had been bought secondhand and hands that had done physical work for a long time and stopped recently, the particular softness of hands that were regaining their skin after years of callus.
Their fingers touched on the ceramic cream pitcher and their eyes met and Daniel saw the man’s heart.
It was a flash.
A color.
Not a physical organ, not the meat-heart, not the blood-pump.
It was a light-shape, a glow, the particular glow of a heart that was carrying something heavy and doing it without complaint.
The color was gray-blue, the gray-blue of a winter sky before snow, and threaded through the gray-blue were veins of a warmer color, a dull gold, the gold of a thing that had been bright once and had been dimmed by years of carrying the gray-blue weight.
Grief.
The gold was grief that had been carried so long it had become a color of its own.
Daniel pulled his hand back.
The stranger took the cream.
The stranger did not notice anything.
The stranger was a cursed man in a cursed town with a cursed heart that was breaking slowly, and the breaking was invisible to everyone except the man whose fingers had touched his on a cream pitcher at seven-fourteen in the morning.
“I’m sorry,” Daniel said, and the words were out before he could stop them, and the stranger looked at him with the particular look of a man who hadn’t been apologized to in a long time and didn’t know what to do with it.
“For the cream?” the stranger said.
“You got there first.
I should be sorry.” “For the weather,” Daniel said.
A lie.
A small lie.
A lie that fit the shape of the apology he hadn’t meant to make.
“It’s going to rain again.” The stranger nodded.
The stranger poured his cream.
The stranger went back to his booth and his coffee and his gray-blue heart with the gold veins and Daniel sat at the counter and didn’t look at anyone else for the rest of the meal.
He was afraid to look.
He was afraid to see.
The kit had given him something new, a seeing, a way of looking through the surface of a person into the color of what they carried, and the seeing wasn’t a gift, and the seeing wasn’t a curse, and the seeing was a tool with the same contract attached as every other tool the kit had given him.
The seeing would cost him.
The seeing was costing him already, because he couldn’t un-see the stranger’s grief, and the stranger’s grief wasn’t his business, and the hum under his sternum didn’t agree that it wasn’t his business.
The hum was vibrating approval.
A low thrum, a satisfied thrum, the thrum of a counterparty that had just demonstrated a new feature and was waiting for him to want to use it.
He did not want to use it.
He didn’t want to see hearts at seven-fourteen in the morning.
He wanted to be a paralegal in Brooklyn with a cat on his feet and a lightbulb that needed changing and a thesis on Propp he was never going to finish.
He wasn’t going to get what he wanted.
The kit was going to give him what the kit wanted him to have, and what the kit wanted him to have was the ability to look at a person and know exactly what they were carrying.
He finished his coffee without looking at anyone.
He paid without looking at Granny.
He walked out without looking at the door, and the door bell was too loud, and he didn’t care that the door bell was too loud, because the hum was still vibrating approval and the stranger with the gray-blue heart was still in the diner and the seeing was still there, a new layer of vision that he couldn’t turn off.
He walked to the woods.
He sat on the bench with the plaque that read “In Memory of Someone Who Loved This View.” He looked at the cannery parking lot.
He thought about the stranger’s heart.
He thought about the color of grief.
He thought about Mrs.
Beasley’s heart, which he hadn’t seen but which he now knew he could see if he looked.
He could see anyone’s heart if he let himself.
He could see what they carried, what they wanted, what they were afraid of.
He could see exactly the pressure point where a wish was waiting to be shaped.
Ruby found him on the bench an hour later.
She was off shift, her apron gone, her hair down, and she was carrying two paper cups from Granny’s.
She handed him one without asking and sat on the other end of the bench.
“You’ve been here a while,” she said.
“I could see you from the diner window.
You haven’t moved.
Not even to swat at the fly that’s been on your knee for ten minutes.” Daniel looked down.
There was a fly on his knee.
It had been there for ten minutes and he hadn’t noticed.
“I was thinking.” “Dangerous habit in this town.” Ruby sipped her coffee.
The steam rose in the cold air and the cold air was sharp and the sharpness was the particular sharp of a November afternoon in a town where winter was always one day away.
“Granny says you’re interesting.
Granny doesn’t say that about anyone.
She’s been running that diner for as long as I can remember and she’s seen everyone who’s ever lived here and she says you’re interesting.” She turned to look at him.
“What did you do to get Granny’s attention?” “Tipped too much.” “That’ll do it.” She laughed, and the laugh was the laugh of someone who was trying to figure out whether to trust him, and the trying was visible in the way her eyes stayed on him a beat too long.
“You know, I’ve been watching people my whole life.
It’s what you do when you’re a waitress.
You learn to read people.
Most people are books you’ve already read.
You’re a book I’ve never seen before.
The pages don’t smell like Storybrooke.” The hum under his sternum was very quiet, the particular quiet of a counterparty that was interested in what a wolf-who-did-not-know-she-was-a-wolf could sense.
Ruby could not see the hum.
Ruby couldn’t read the ledger inside his coat.
But Ruby could smell something wrong, something other, something that didn’t belong in the curse, and the smelling was instinct, and the instinct was the wolf, and the wolf was still there under the waitress.
“Where do the pages smell like?” Daniel asked.
“I don’t know,” Ruby said.
“Somewhere else.
Somewhere with bigger buildings and worse coffee and a lot more people.
Somewhere you’re not from a cannery.” She stood up and brushed off her jeans.
“Anyway.
Don’t stay out here too long.
Granny says it’s going to snow tonight.
The first snow of the year.
The town gets weird when it snows.
Weirder than usual.” She walked back toward the diner and didn’t look back.
The hum hummed a note of recognition.
Ruby was a loose thread in the curse’s weaving, a wolf who could almost smell through the fabric.
The kit had noted her.
The kit was filing her proximity to Daniel under a category marked “potential witness” or “potential tool” or both.
He sat on the bench and looked at the parking lot and the hum hummed approval, and the approval was the worst sound he had ever heard, and the sound wasn’t a sound, and that made it worse.
The kit was not teaching him to help.
The kit was teaching him to see exactly where the help was needed, and the seeing was the setup, and the help was the trap, and the trap had his name on it.
He thought about the stranger’s heart again.
Gray-blue with gold veins.
Grief that had been carried so long it had become a color of its own.
If he could see the grief, he could shape a wish to ease it.
The hum was waiting for him to shape the wish.
The hum was cataloguing every person in the diner whose heart was carrying something heavy, and the catalogue was a menu, and Daniel was the waiter, and the special of the day was always the same: a wish in exchange for a price you wouldn’t know until it was too late.
He understood now what the kit was building.
The Heart-Holding sight was not a diagnostic tool.
It was a marketing tool.
It showed him exactly where the demand was.
It showed him who was desperate enough to accept a deal they didn’t understand.
It showed him the pressure points, and the pressure points were opportunities, and the opportunities were traps, and the traps were for him as much as for the people whose hearts he could see.
He understood now.
The kit was an antagonist wearing the shape of a gift.
The kit had bought him, and the kit was investing in him, and the investment was going to mature into something he didn’t want to be.
He sat on the bench and looked at the parking lot and the hum hummed approval, and the approval was the worst sound he had ever heard, and the sound was not a sound, and that made it worse.
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