in every universe (one shot-s) | JENLISA

the key to any problem

happy new year yall! wishing you health and happiness :) (a the haunting of bly manor adaptation)

Distance, Jennie Kim is told, makes the heart grow fonder--and maybe that's true, for some situations. For the situation that is her mother, she thinks there isn't enough distance in the world. Not even hopping a plane to England, telling Karen with the slapdash over-her-shoulder desperation of a woman on the run, "I'll call! I'll call when I get settled!" was enough.

She's a grown woman, she reminds herself entirely too frequently. A grown woman with a good job, a nice living situation, a whole life out here in Bly, and if her stomach still sinks into her sneakers when the phone rings--if she still wakes in a cold sweat from dreams of home--if it makes her feel like she's going just a little bit out of her mind when her mother sends "well-meaning" texts about Jennie's love life...

Grown women still have to deal with ghosts of a certain kind, it would appear.

Still, Jennie's comfortable with her decisions. Happy, even. Most girls don't flee the country over a breakup, but when that breakup comes with disapproving head shakes in the grocery store, and with cajoling Facebook posts, and with Eddie's mother materializing on her doorstep to insist that cold feet happen, Jennifer, it doesn't mean he doesn't still love you--dire choices must sometimes be made.

Some girls would leap headlong into a new relationship, or invent wild excuses for their behavior, or have a public meltdown.

Jennie Kim--quietly, without asking permission or for anyone's advice on the subject--packed three small bags, bought a ticket to anywhere else, please, and left.

Six months later, she found herself here: a live-in au pair for a couple of incredible children in a stately country manor she couldn't have conceived of back in Iowa. It had been less than simple, at first: Miles was alternately sweet and cold, Flora bouncing between hyperactive and nearly sick with misery. They missed their parents, they missed their former au pair, they missed Peter Quint, for reasons no other occupant of the house had seemed quite able to understand. And Jennie, who had been looking for a distraction big enough to wield against the shadows of her own failed relationship, had felt strangely at home without even trying.

The others had, of course, helped--Owen, with his brotherly teasing and top-notch culinary skills; Hannah, an excellent listener who made Jennie feel instantly as though she had nothing to be ashamed of; Lisa, who walked into the room day one and felt as though she'd been in her life from the start.

Jennie, whose friend list had previously consisted of Edmund and all of his friends, as well as a handful of colleagues from school, had felt as though she was plunging out into a deep ocean only to be caught by these three people. Caught, and buoyed, and loved, against all odds.

It has been strange, and it has been complicated, but it has also been good. Not that she's been able to get as much across to her mother, who calls once a week with barbed questions on her tongue: when are you coming back? are you even bothering to look for another job? you know Eddie's still talking about you, don't you, Jennifer?

All the more reason to stay here forever, she thinks each time she hangs up. All the more reason to build a permanent life out here in Bly, with its huge staircase and its elegant walls and its tiny little family tucked into a warm kitchen.

"I don't know why I even pick up," Jennie tells Lisa one day, tossing her cell phone so hard, it bounces off the couch and clatters to the floor. Lisa bends, picks it up, inspecting the screen for dents.

"All good," she says, handing it back. "And you do it 'cuz you're kind. Couldn't say I'd be the same, if I had a mother that relentless."

Jennie laughs, feels just a little better, as she always seems to with Lisa in the room. She's never had a friend like her before, someone so willing--even eager--to listen to her speak. Not that Lisa is one of those people who tells Jennie what she wants to hear, someone poised to constantly stroke her ego. She's a little rough around the edges, uninterested in lies or games, and when she looks Jennie in the eye, she always feels seen. It's been refreshing, these months with Lisa. Makes her feel safe in a way she can't remember ever being before, even when she was little.