Chapter Text
When the man walked out of the lake, Daphne was absolutely convinced for a moment that God had sent her an angel.
Since she was a little girl, Daphne was always to be found near the water. Staring mesmerized at the steady flow of water from a tap, trailing her hands in the pond in the garden, trying to skip stones across the lake outside the cabin her family went on holiday. She learned to fish from her father's friends, waking up in the small hours of the cold mornings in early spring to follow them down the river. She hated killing the fish, though, and instead took to angling. At twenty three, still living in her family home, a pastime of hers was catching fish to transport to her home and keep in the fish tank in her bedroom. When she finally moved out, only three streets away from her parents' house, nearer to the river than ever, Daphne's fish tank came with her.
Her family was never religious, but respected the deep faith Daphne found. The local church became her favorite place, and the pastor one of her closest friends. It was no surprise to anyone she ended up marrying him. Daphne had three years of more happiness than she thought most people received, despite the storm that destroyed the season's harvest and a part of the town the second year. Daphne and her husband opened their house to those who had lost their homes in the flood.
Daphne went down to the river often, just to sit on the bank and listen to the quiet. The furthest away from her home town she'd been was the east of the US, New York City, because her husband was wanted for a speech there. It was a new experience, and very different from anything she'd ever known, and for that, she appreciated it, but knew she wouldn't be able to bear it for longer than the week they spent there.
Daphne Allen nee Featherstone believed in God more than she had ever believed in anything. Layla Rourke, a young woman part of her husband's congregation, had contracted cancer. Her mother was packing her bags, they were going to travel across several states to where a 'healer' had been rumored to be working miracles. As the pastor's wife, and a vicaress in her own right, Daphne felt it her duty to talk to her. Ralph was busy, a spate of serious illness in the congregation had brought his blessings into demand among the mothers. Daphne baked a sponge cake and took it down the street to where young Layla lived.
They sat at the pale wooden table in the kitchen, light streaming in through the window. Daphne wondered how Layla could look so peaceful, sitting there in the mid morning sunlight among the tasteful cream color scheme of the kitchen, her fair hair tied back and her brown eyes bright and focused, while a poisonous cancer was eating away inside her, invisible. The woman in front of her was dying, and Daphne couldn't remember her looking healthier.
"I have faith," Layla told her. "I have faith in God, and that he will do whatever he wants with me, and that I'll have reward for whatever I suffer. I can only pray and hope and live the best I can for as long as I am alive. And I'm at peace. Thank you for coming, Daphne, and the cake is lovely, but you don't need to worry about me. I know God will determine my fate, and I'm okay with that. I pray that you'll always be at peace with yours."
Mrs. Rourke came downstairs then, and said their train was here and they needed to go. The women stood up, Layla hugged her. Daphne kissed her on the forehead as a sort of blessing. Then her mother took her arm, and her face was looking a little grey now, but she smiled at Daphne, and they left her holding the key to their house to give to Arianne, the neighbor. Daphne waved to them, a heavy creature crouching on her heart whispering that she would never see Layla again.
A year later, they receive the news that the healer failed, and Layla and her mother are going to Ireland because she wants to be buried there. Six months after that, Daphne flies out to Ireland for her funeral. It's the furthest she's ever been from home, and it's all green, and the water is so clear, and the air is fresh and she loves it there. She stays longer than she needs to, the funeral is over in three days. Daphne stands over Layla's grave with over twenty people who knew her, and is glad Layla found peace and didn't struggle in vain against her fate. She's glad Layla is being laid to rest in a beautiful place, at the edge of a forest with bright grass and healthy earth. Ralph reads something from the Bible, something about how when God takes the good young, because the deeds in their short life are already enough to redeem them. Daphne tries to pay attention to it, and not think about the poem she learned in ninth grade, "Do not go gentle into that good night." A poem by Dylan Thomas has nothing on the word of God, which says death is inescapable and pointless to fight, but somehow the words have never left her head.
Daphne returns home, and decides to go to college to get a degree. Her vague plan for this comes to a screeching halt when the local doctor, her mother's brother in law, Henry Faulkner, pronounces her pregnant.
She's going to have a baby.
Suddenly there's fussing around her, everyone, her sister and parents and Ralph and everyone and she's going to be a mother and her friends who have all been through this process already are alternately comforting and terrifying her with their stories of it, and she's going to have a baby, and Ralph spends hours on bouncingbabynames.com trying to pick out the perfect Biblical name for their child, while Daphne makes coffee and assures him that whatever name they choose will be just fine. It's about this time when Ralph realizes she's standing up and immediately hurries to make her sit down and put a blanket on her. Daphne suffers the ministrations with patience, Ralph has never been a father before, nor has he ever been pregnant, but he does his level best to serve her every need. He has always been devoted, though not unhealthily so, and Daphne is wrapped in the warm feeling of mutual affection and powerful love, now laced with excitement and anticipation. She's only three months along, and the morning sickness and mood swings haven't really kicked in yet, though she does spend two mornings out of five locked in the bathroom first thing, she's made the mistake all newly pregnant mothers make of thinking their metabolism is special enough to keep them from the usual grievances of pregnancy.
When she's five months along, Daphne's cousin visits them, all the way from California. She hasn't seen Jace since he was twelve and she was nine, but he's as tan and smiling as ever. Jace's pickup truck rattles into the driveway, and Daphne hurries to let him in and show him around. They visit around the neighborhood, relatives, family friends and her parents all overwhelming in hospitality to the expecting mother and the prodigal son (Jace left quite a few broken-hearted local girls around town when he upped and ran off to California).
Jace is overjoyed to be the baby's only uncle and demands that Daphne let him spoil the baby when she's born. Ralph tells him Henry Faulkner says it's probably a boy, from the fancy ultrasound machine, but Daphne has that odd feeling she gets sometimes that the baby will be a girl. She tells her cousin this, and he declares it will be a girl, and he'll buy her all the blue baby clothes in town, so that she can overcome gender-based discrimination from infancy. "She'll look like you, probably," he estimates, and Ralph agrees. "Honey, can we plant a thorn tree outside her window to keep the boys away?"
Daphne laughs. "Slow down, she has to get born first before we think about fending off marriage proposals."
Only the baby never does get born.
Ralph never does get around to planting a thorn tree outside the nursery window.
Jace never gets to see his girlfriend in California again.
Because the demons come.
Daphne doesn't want to talk about it. She can't even think about it.
The only thing that gets her through the long six months afterwards is the knowledge of how disappointed in her Ralph would be if she ended it. They always swore their faith was strong enough that they could survive losing each other and be patient until God granted the living one a natural death. But then Daphne had expected to lose him to a car crash, or another bad storm, or disease, maybe. Not black eyes and blood and torn flesh and screams in the darkness, unholy stink of sulfur and ash. God didn't prepare her for this.
She doesn't want to talk about it. An unshaven man with scars on his throat and face comes in and drives the demons away. Daphne gives him Jace's pickup truck (he won't be needing it no more), and he drives out. No one thanks him.
They don't want to think about it.