𝖋**𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖗𝖎𝖈𝖍 𝖕𝖊𝖔𝖕𝖑𝖊

Action Girl: As she is chased around the mansion, she's forced to get her hands dirty in order to survive. She's also just a normal woman with a normal life forced into a situation she never anticipated.

Action Dress Rip: She does this to her wedding dress in order to manoeuvre around easier and even puts on her converse. Her wedding dress acts as a clock, signalling how traumatised and brutalised she's been. It starts out clean and nice and eventually becomes irreparably wrecked as the night goes on.

Beware the Nice Ones: She's a caring girl who loves her future husband and family very much. After being relentlessly hunted by her in-laws for several hours, she has no trouble resorting to brutalising them to death. Especially with her newlywed husband, who she explicitly allows to die

Blood-Splattered Warrior: From the point that Grace first gets injured she slowly gets covered in more blood, getting coated in it when her in laws begin exploding by the end of the night

Final girl: This one needs no explanation

Foster Kid: She mentions she was this when she was younger, which is why she's excited to become part of the family since she's never had one before.

I Just Want to Be Loved: During her wedding, she confides in Becky that she always wanted a real family.

Laughing Mad: After the family fails to kill her before sunrise and Helene still attempts to kill her they all explode and Grace is left covered in their blood and laughing like mad.

Sir Swears-a-Lot: Curses more than anyone else in the movie. More than everyone else combined for that matter.

𝐎𝐏𝐄𝐍 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑

Danny leans back against the bench with a tired sigh, relief coming over him for the first time in an hour or two. He’d been getting these persistent headaches, strong enough to make his vision blurry and his eyes water, when they hit hard enough. When his aching eyes do close, scenes of neon green and blue play behind his eyelids, and everything seems to fade away to static for just a moment.

He doesn’t know what they mean, but the thought of going home to his mom and telling her about them makes him feel uncomfortable. The last thing Danny needs is the one person he knows he can trust with anything thinking that he’s weird too. 

The scary part was, they were becoming more frequent. They’d started out as glimpses, here or there, and have now grown into something else entirely. Still, a nagging voice in his head begged him not to let anyone know. Hell, he wasn’t sure that if he told his parents, they wouldn’t believe he was possessed by a ghost or something. They were pretty embarrassing already, the last thing he needed was his dad hanging out in his room at 2:00am with an EMF reader above his head.

Brushing dark hair out of his eyes, Danny spots someone not too far from him, just at the edges of Echo Park. The person is walking one direction, and a stranger the opposite, before they collide - just a second of rough treatment - before the stranger is off, walking faster than they came. Danny’s up in an instant, eyes narrowed and a dangerous blue. “Hey!” He shouts after the person, retreating quickly with their hood up, before turning his attention to someone who looked vaguely familiar, in just his passing glimpse.

“You okay?”

Grace was beginning to find it fairly odd how often she was being accosted upon her leaving her apartment, though her interaction with Kaz had been the most extreme of these cases at this point even bumping into someone at the park was worthy of note. The stranger hadn’t hit her particularly hard, it was more the shock of the action that had startled Grace and the fact that even the dogs she had with her hadn’t even alerted. So much for her big scary guard dogs, but then again Grace wasn’t even sure they liked her yet. Probably didn’t help that she hired a dog walker to handle them usually, maybe this was her karma for deciding to walk the Dobermans herself for a change.

She curses silently to herself as she watches the stranger dash away, quickly inspecting herself for any immediate damage while wrangling the two dogs who were now finally acting concerned. Why on Earth did she bother leaving her apartment anymore at all, it’s not like she needed the money and she was pretty sure the board would be glad to never see her face again if she decided to ‘work from home’. Right now, Grace was seriously considering it.

meme → location prompts topic → graveyard + @graceledcmas​​ i can manage a minute. possibly two. → queries

She couldn’t manage to enter the graveyard. This was the fifth time this month that Zoya had come to the entrance, determined to tell her aunt - what? That she missed her? That she hated this town? That none of it made sense? 

The graveyard felt all wrong. It felt dead in a way that had nothing to do with bodies. She couldn’t sense the loss she should feel, and somehow felt like the headstones would crumble like styrofoam under water if she were to touch them. Like it was all fake. She wanted to be angry - furious, even - but she didn’t have it in her. Not today. 

With a huff of exasperation, she began to tie up her hair, trying to get it off of her neck and away from her face to have something to do with her hands. So that she would stop staring at her aunt’s headstone. Her eyes went everywhere but at that headstone - until they found someone else in the graveyard. She dropped her hands, dark hair spilling down her back once more, as she eyed the woman warily. Her chin tipped up as she said, “Mourning, or just enjoy creepy places? This town is full of them.”

Grace hadn’t made a habit of actually mourning her in laws, considering she hadn’t known them long at all by the time they had reached the wedding and ultimately their deaths. Alex hadn’t been overly keen for Grace to meet the Le Domas’ and it was only because they were to get married on the family estate that she assumed that she met them at all. Would they have died that day had she and Alex just eloped? She supposed there was no point dwelling on that for too long, it wouldn’t actually change anything.

So if Grace had been mourning it should be for her husband, and if she were to do that it would be at the Le Domas mausoleum over on the other side of the cemetery. Instead she was here standing by a nondescript headstone that was definitely not her husband’s and was the only person she had found herself feeling any grief over, Daniel Le Domas, her brother in law. Of course he’d been sober enough at some point to stipulate in his will that he wanted his own grave away from the family’s plot, it had made Grace cry when she first read it because it was just so Daniel and it was the first time she’d realised that she missed him.

JESPER  SCRATCHES  THE  DOG  ABSENTLY  behind  the  ear ,  hardly  even  aware  he’s  doing  it  until  the  pup’s  tail  begins  wagging  again .  it’s  too  easy  for  him  to  fall  into  old  habits  -  which  is  why  he  currently  has  a  goat  wreaking  havoc  in  his  apartment .  if  he  continues  this  way ,  he’ll  be  living  with  a  whole  farm  by  this  time  next  year  -  and  he’s  having  a  hard  enough  time  affording  food  for  himself .   “ well  I  definitely  like  ‘ lost  and  found ’  better , ”  he  says ,  letting  his  fingers  fall  away  from  the  warm fur .  he  can’t  -  he  won’t  -  abandon  this  dog  to  what  basically  amounts  to  canine  prison ,  not  until  he’s  sure  whoever  it  belongs  to  will  be  coming  back  .  

but  he  can’t  very  well  take  him  home ,  either .  milo  wouldn’t  like  that . 

“ he  just  started  following  me , ”  he  explains ,  as  if  he’d  done  nothing  at  all  to  encourage  it .  “ I’m  sure  he  belongs  to  someone ,  but  he  must  have  slipped  his  collar . ”  jesper’s  not  entirely  sure  what  it  is  he  wants  from  this  stranger ;  she’s  already  told  him  the  dog  isn’t  hers ,  and  until  about  a  minute  ago  nothing  about  this  situation  had  been  her  problem .  still ,  he  feels  the  guilt  slowly  abating  now  that  he’s  done  something  to  find  the  dog’s  home ,  and  he’s  not  eager  to  be  facing  it  alone  again .  “ flyers ! ”  he  declares ,  a  hint  of  triumph  in  his  voice  as  the  idea  takes  form  in  his  mind . “  I  could  print  some ,  post  them   around . ”  for  a  moment  he’s  beaming ,  brimming  with  certainty  -  but  then  his  brow  knits ,  smile  faltering . “  —  new  question ,   you  don’t  happen  to  know  of  any  completely  free  printing  services ,  do  you ? ”

Grace eyes the dog in the strangers arms, it wasn’t hard to believe that it had latched onto this man. It certainly looked like the clingy type, which meant it was probably a beloved pet who was being missed right now. The longer that Grace looked at the sweet pup the harder it was for her to distance herself from the situation, she was a sucker for the puppy eyes. After the fire that had killed her entire in-laws Grace had inherited the prized Doberman hounds as well as everything else, now they ruled the domain of her new apartment. Though the dogs were bigger than those she would normally gravitate towards Grace had found she enjoyed their company in the overly spacious apartment, though they mostly kept to themselves the sounds of other presences was more than enough to keep her at ease.

***

The offer for a ride back to town was tempting now that she’d paused her run. Her body was sore and she could almost taste the coffee she was looking forward to later that morning, but Trish declined, “I should probably finish my run. I’d hate for my trainer to find out I didn’t put in at least a few miles this morning.” Her trainer was herself, but that was besides the point. The thought of getting in a car with a stranger – even a nice one like Grace who seemed to have an understanding of Trish that few in this town had – set her on edge.

“But I’m sure you’ll find me at the coffee shop sooner rather than later,” she added with a smile. Trish didn’t want to seem rude. Friends were a foreign concept to Trish, but restarting in a small town meant maybe even someone like her had a hope to change.

///

Grace smiled widely, a tough task to achieve so early in the morning these days. At least before coffee had been had. “Then you definitely have more discipline than I do” Grace would suggest making herself go running, or even using her new fortune to hire a trainer, even if just to help save her sanity with how crazy things had gotten for her since the fire. Except that exercise had really never been her thing, though she had impressed herself more than once with her upper body strength despite no training.

“Of course” She nods in acceptance, since Grace was pretty much running on caffeine at this point bumping into each other wherever the stuff was being sold wasn’t a long stretch to make at all. “Good luck with the rest of your run” Grace offers a final wave to the other woman, as well as one last look at the goats in the field, before turning and heading to her waiting car knowing that once she got inside she’d be heading back to yet another long day of business related nonesense.

~*~

Jessica’s eyes fell to the ground for a moment, and she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I told him he was a prick for that,” she murmured. She remembered the articles about her family’s accident, all the horrible, graphic details and photos put out there for the vultures to seize. To give people an excuse to stop her in the street and tell her how deeply sorry they were, how awful it must be, how tragic for her. As if she didn’t know that already. 

At least that was far in the past. She only thought about it in her nightmares now, but Grace’s pain was recent, her wounds fresh and still vulnerable to have salt rubbed in them. “Idealistic isn’t a word people usually use to describe me,” she said, smirking lightly. “For what sticking to your guns is worth. It doesn’t usually get me farther than my first draft.” After that, the editor got his hands on it and did what he wanted. It was slowly driving her insane. But at least he couldn’t manipulate her pictures, twist them into something they weren’t. The worst he could do was refuse to run them, and that was better for her — it meant they stayed only hers. 

“Yes well men tend to have a habit of not listening to the wiser words of women” As far as her new board of the Le Domas Family Games Company were concerned none of Grace’s ideas were even worth considering, she was pretty sure it was her gender that was the issue rather than her age or inexperience. There were a few men on the board younger than her, they simply had the benefit of a dick between their legs. But Grace appreciated the idea that there had been someone with her in mind at the paper, even if they hadn’t been the loudest voice.

Bella laughed. Okay, good. She was so tired of pushing the suburban mom-approved hashtag-empowerment book club oeuvre. Thank god Renee had never been too into that stuff. Her book clubs were more becoming one with nature and channelling your inner goddess through breathing techniques and meditation, and incredibly specific nonfiction books about this histories of, like, trees and Beat poets. You know, normal stuff. Charlie liked a good crime thriller now and again. Otherwise? No Big Little Lies or The Secret in either of their houses.

“Thank god,” Bella said, “because I might have had to quit on the spot if you wanted them.”

On closer look, there was something about this woman that Bella liked. Something scrappy and sharp in the set of her mouth. Something steely in her eyes. As she placed a hand on the counter, Bella got a glimpse of tattoos–so at odds with the rest of her outfit, which probably cost more than Bella’s annual salary. She had a story, for sure. Bella wanted to know it, but she didn’t want to ask.

So instead she crossed her arms, narrowed her eyes, and tilted her head, thinking. “Honestly?” she said at last. “I’m not really a nonfiction person. I don’t know much about… entrepreneurship. All I’ve got is, like, Gatsby? Which is probably not the message you’re going for.” She shrugged. “What’s, um… what’s the industry? Maybe we’ve got some history on it or something?”

Grace liked the spunk of the young clerk, it brought an easy smile to her face. She had no idea what she had been expecting when she had walked into the bookshop but this was certainly a better outcome than she could have ever hoped for “Luckily you won’t be having to do that on my account.”

The Great Gatsby. The blonde can’t help but scoff at the idea, that was definitely not the message that she was going for with her new wealth “If I ever end up like Jay Gatsby then you have my permission to throw me into the ocean.” If anything Grace was more like Daisy in her situation, it was her own marriage to Alex that had caused her the current problems as much as she had thought she truly loved him. But it wouldn’t do her much good comparing her life to a classic novel, her life may have sounded more like fiction than anything real at this point.

***

She was caught there and she nodded. “Moved from New York recently,” Trish admitted, letting herself catch her breath as she took this pause in what was becoming her morning routine since moving to the smaller town. The move from New York was mostly true. The stay in a facility that went between that time was something no one needed to know. (Though if they were curious enough about the life of Trish Walker then it was likely only a google search away.)

“Trish,” she introduced herself in return, purposely leaving off the last name but making a note of the stranger’s name Le Domas. The name held a certain grace and sophistication that made Trish think she was more important to this town than Trish realized at first. “I used to be a sleep past noon person myself,” she offered as a reply – though those days had ended once she’d gotten her life together and put the world of Patsy behind her. The women were both stilted, almost wary of one another in their interactions.

“So was I” Grace confined with an amused smile “but that was before I met my husband.” And even before that Grace had at times worked multiple jobs during college in order to afford rent and other amenities so by the time a day off came around she slept in till noon out of exhaustion rather than any specific desire. Though she had accidentally slept through more classes that she was prepared to admit. Alex for his part had been raised to be up at the crack of dawn to sit down and eat breakfast with his family, another one of the Le Domas’ traditions, which meant that lazy mornings in bed together had not been in his repertoire when they started dating. Fucking rich people.

Grace takes another look at the filed, and the goats that didn’t give a shit that she had come to visit them, before fully turning her attention to the other blonde. “I don’t know about you” Grace announces, brushing her wind swept hair behind her ear “but I need the strongest coffee known to man.” She fishes her car keys out of her pocket, motioning to the parked car “Would you like a ride back into town? Or are you not quite finished with your run?”

Jessica arched a brow. A reluctant fondness growing in her chest, though it probably didn’t show on her face. She preferred it that way. Staying hard to read, that was safer. It kept people at a distance. Maybe Le Domas felt that way too. After losing so much at once… Jessica knew how that felt, how it changed a person. You needed space after something like that, space to find out who you were now. “I think the citizens of Echo Springs would thank you,” she said, smirking lightly. It was a start. 

She nodded, understanding. She could picture it instantly, a board room full of stuffed suits, white men with sour faces, picking and prodding at the image of their newfound CEO. It rankled her, sent an unpleasant jolt through her veins, followed by that swift, burning fury. Jessica was used to it, it happened so often and she barely questioned it anymore. Maybe she was just a pissy person. She shrugged at the question. “My editor would say my job is to take decent pictures and make the whole town look good,” she murmured, raising her camera to take a snapshot. It did not make the town look good. “I like to think my job is about showing the town the truth.” 

As much as Grace wished her threat was for the benefit of the other citizens of Echo Springs she couldn’t quite deny the ultimately selfish motivation. Just because her father-in-law as the previous CEO had thrown money at people’s campaigns or lined others pockets didn’t mean she was quite as willing to just follow along. She figured that withdrawing her financial support for one would send a message to any others, she was not her predecessor and would not be a pushover and hand out money to anyone that expected it. It was about as much control as she would probably be able to have over the situation, if she acted without acknowledging the board.

‘‘Milk or sugar? Cream?’‘ Melinda asked averting her eyes to the pad as she wrote down the order. ‘‘Anything else?’‘ She took a moment to glance up at the customer. They both looked the same way, tired. She couldn’t help but feel bad. She probably gave off the vibe that she was the same way. Nightmares kept her up.

“No thank you, just the straight black coffee” For the most part Grace’s body was running solely on caffeine and she couldn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel when she would either start sleeping better, or her new workload would finally decrease “I just want the strong dose of caffeine.” She eyes up the menu again “I’m debating on the waffles since I always get that, but I’m thinking maybe I should mix it up and get a burger. What do you think?”

The possibility that Jamie may have offended Grace had not even crossed her mind, but the other woman did not seem overly concerned by the comment. She nodded as Grace spoke, an giving her an understanding, sympathetic, frown. “Yes, quite.” Was all she said, her voice the perfect copy of pitying. In truth, of course, she felt nothing for the other woman’s apparent childhood plight, except mild curiosity. It was a feat to have risen from such humble beginnings to become the owner of a company, that Jamie had to concede. She supposed it went some way to accounting for her exasperation for the men she unfortunately worked with. But all Jamie did was give Grace an understanding smile, and said no more about it.

However, she couldn’t help but notice Grace’s own smile flicker, just a tad. It was barely a movement of her muscles, but it was quite certainly there. Jamie wondered, in a moment of uncharacteristic empathy but typical astuteness, how often Grace had heard people say they were sorry for the fire. It was only a moment, a slight change of expression, but it told Jamie rather a lot, all the same. As Grace explained her plans for the ruined mansion, Jamie nodded patiently. “Of course,” she interjected, when Grace paused. And then, when the other woman was done with her explanation, she said, “Well, as I said, I’d be happy to take a look. In fact –” She undid her handbag and looked inside, before pulling out a small white card, on which was printed Jamie Moriarty, Fine Art Restorer, and a phone number. She handing it to Grace. “Here’s my contact information,” she said, rather pointlessly. “When you are ready to have me take a look, do get in touch. I hope all goes well with your rebuilding efforts.”

Jamie laughed at Grace’s retort. “Yes, I’m sure you could,” she agreed. “It would either irritate them because it is incorrect, or they would show their hand by pretending to know what it means.” She gave Grace an idiosyncratic, slanted, smile – one of her few rare ones, reserved for people whose time she actually enjoyed. “You’re more devious than you first appear, you know,” she said. “And I mean that as a compliment.” Coming from anyone else, it might have been misconstrued as an insult, but there was no mistaking the warmth in her tone. Despite her first impression of Grace as a harried, nosy, individual, she had grown to like the other woman, insofar as she could like anyone, in a remarkably short period of time.

However, her smile slipped a little when Grace  said that it was quite a story. Jamie was an incredibly patient woman, but she had uncharacteristically little patience when it came to listening to other people’s stories. But, as Grace took a long pull on her cigarette, Jamie could see that there was no interrupting her, so she arranged her expression into one of polite attentiveness, and listened carefully as Grace told the story. There was more to pick up on than merely her words – she stared off into the distance, deftly avoiding eye contact as she spoke. And Jamie watched her carefully as she listened, nodding at Grace’s brief pauses, to indicate that she was taking in every word. And she was indeed taking in every word of the story. Grace painted quite a picture of her in-laws home, and Jamie could only imagine the kinds of beautiful artefacts hidden away there, and in this facility. Then Grace mentioned the fire, and even Jamie’s carefully controlled expression of mild interest slipped for a moment.

She didn’t say anything as Grace finished the story, and stubbed out the cigarette at long last. After a few seconds, she spoke. “I am very sorry to hear about the fire,” she said, her polite tone edged with a facsimile of concern which sounded absolutely genuine. It was obviously an astounded loss of property and life, but it simply didn’t touch her in the slightest. She felt no flicker of empathy, or sympathy, or sadness, at all. “But of course, I will gladly lend you my expertise in valuing it. And perhaps I can put you in touch with the museum’s curator? I’m sure she would be more than happy to take some of it off your hands, to be stored in the museum, if you have no space or need for it?” She phrased it as a question, and raised her eyebrows.

Was she devious? That was not something that Grace had ever been associated with before, or at least not to her knowledge. Thinking on it she was sure that a news outlet or two who bought into the conspiracy theories would have happily labelled her as devious for the part they believed she played in the fire. But those were for perceived actions, these ones had come from her own mouth and she had entirely meant them. Was this an after effect of what she had to endure and do in order to survive the fire? It could have been a more dormant trait, Grace conceded. “I guess you have to be good at standing your ground when you live in group homes, there is no room for being a pushover amongst all that.” And Grace certainly hadn’t been that, she had always had a backbone but it wasn’t until the fire and what she had to do to survive that she realised quite how sturdy it was.

She wasn’t wrong, of course. Kaz had no need to know about that night, and truthfully, he didn’t entirely know why he was so curious. It was one of the few things about Kaz Rietveld he hadn’t seen to cut off like so much fat on a piece of meat; his curiosity usually benefited him, whether in learning about others or understanding a device. Jack of all trades, master of none, he supposed. 

He raised his brows as she smoked, slightly surprised. Not a casual smoker, he suspected - he hadn’t smelled the smoke before, and she didn’t have the tell-tale signs of an addict - the yellow teeth, the stained fingers. That, or he was getting sloppy. “What can I say? I like to keep up with current events.” He said, and for once, it was the truth. Learning about that fire wouldn’t benefit him much, he simply was curious about it and knew it wouldn’t leave his mind until he understood more. Until he understood the strange scars and the wallet that seemed so personal, and so private. Something he’d like to research - and soon. Especially if she was going to continue evading his questions. “Whatever it takes to survive.”

“Well it’s not current events anymore so you don’t need to worry about it” Grace’s tone is that of finality, her tight lipped smile making it clear to the thief before her this was no longer up for discussion. She had yet to sit down with a psychiatrist to talk about what had happened, and whatever was going on with her dreams, there was no chance she was going to offer up her weaknesses on a platter for this guy. She was certain it was for far more than just professional curiosity. But they at least had the will to survive in common, Grace may only remember snippets of her wedding night but what she did remember made her realise there had always been a part of her that was stronger than she had ever realised. 

***

It wasn’t until the other woman mentioned it that Trish noticed the car pulled down a small side road. Trish had never stayed at the edge of town long enough to notice the goats, or maybe she’d been too wrapped up in her own thoughts to ever consider the possibility that the field off to the side had any kind of animals living on it. Now, the sight was odd enough to make her pause, or maybe it was the sight of the younger woman out here on her own.

“A fire? My condolences,” Trish offered, realizing that maybe she’d intruded on someone’s quiet moment of reflection. “Trish. I’m new to town,” she introduced herself a bit awkwardly with a smile and an extended hand. She was sure the other woman knew by now that Trish was new. She doubted that in a town like this a fire like that wouldn’t be common knowledge.

///

Grace couldn’t help but wince at the message of condolence, she knew it was just human nature to respond in such a way when death was involved and was absolutely certain she had offered very similar messages herself in the past. But there had come a point that Grace had gotten sick of hearing the words and the looks of sympathy, it was nothing on the people offering them to her, rather the fact that she sick of playing the grieving widow they expected to see in response. Maybe there was something wrong with Grace, but she didn’t miss her husband nor his family. Daniel was the only exception, but no amount of grief would bring him back. 

“You must be new to not have heard about it” Understandably a house as big as the Le Domas family manor burning down had made news, and when it had circulated that everyone except Grace the new bride had died? Well it had been everywhere. Followed swiftly by the updates on the investigation into the fire, and into Grace herself, altogether it hadn’t been a brief stint in the gossip circles of Echo Springs. Or even further afield. “I’m Grace Le Domas” She turns her gaze to look back at the other woman, offering a painfully strained smile. It was too early for Grace to be having conversation, she hadn’t even had her coffee yet. “I always used to envy people who can get up and go for a run in the mornings” She scoffs, blue hues seeking out the grazing goats in the field beyond the fence once again “and now here I am getting up and driving out here to look at goats.”

Jamie laughed a little, though it was rather a cold sound, devoid of genuine happiness. “Yes, I’m not surprised,” she said. “I am quite certain that, if one were to climb the ladder of any corporation, one would find similar men sitting at the top of it.” She appreciated Grace’s obvious distaste, and smiled warmly at it. Despite a few female colleagues at the Echo Springs museum, Jamie was still in a similar predicament with most of her male ones. Those who didn’t harass her to go on dates were insufferable idiots with barely a brain cell between them, who had apparently fallen into their various roles at the museum through nepotism alone. And they were merely her peers – she hadn’t been deigned important enough to meet the upper echelons of the museum yet.

Grace cut herself off, and anyone else might not have picked up on the half-formed word, but Jamie frowned slightly, quizzically. Husband. It was a rather interesting thing to alter mid-sentence. Her gaze flickered to Grace’s hand, and she saw no wedding ring there. Ex-husband. But Jamie made no comment, and instead said, “My apologies. I didn’t mean to sound overly…” she paused, searching for the appropriate word. “… Cerebral. It means don’t let the bastards grind you down.” And here, she flashed Grace a smile. “It’s an inaccurate Latin phrase, coined by Margaret Atwood. And it does indeed sound good.” Though she was an inherently judgemental person, she found herself liking Grace no less for the gap in her literature knowledge.

Even the crude way the question of her profession was phrased didn’t bother Jamie, and she nodded. “Yes, exactly. Old art, but occasionally new, if it needs restoring.” But any further explanation of her profession was cut off when Grace said she had paintings lying around, and Jamie’s interest was caught at once. Her eyebrows raised. “Certainly. I am, by no means, an art valuer, but I know a thing or to about the worth of artwork.” She paused, and couldn’t resist trying to find out more. “These… paintings you have lying around, I’m assuming they aren’t yours? I’m happy to help, of course, but I would be fascinated to know how one ends up with a lot of paintings lying around.” She repeated Grace’s own words back to her, with emphasis on them, and looked at the other woman curiously. 

Don’t let the bastards get you down, Grace rather liked that. She particularly liked the way that Jamie had said it, the Latin may have been incorrect but it took a somewhat crude message and hid it behind a beautiful phrase. And she may not have read the book, but she knew of Margaret Atwood and that the books she wrote would have no appeal to the men at Le Domas Family Games Company, and she was making that assumption on the fact that they hated Grace and everything she represented. It wasn’t a hard stretch to make. “The bonus of it being incorrect Latin is that I could probably get away with saying that to the private school kids” She was pretty sure by this point that was a joke that Jamie would get, since they shared a dislike of the men that sat around tables acting all important all because of their bank accounts and fancy schooling. Grace smiles conspiratorially at the idea, feeling much better for having this one conversation than she had in a long time. Probably even before she had met Alex and her life had gone downhill.

“Indeed,” Jamie replied, when Grace echoed the words back to her. “I find that is sometimes the best course of action.” She gave Grace a smile. She had never had to fake it, per se, because faking it implied that one didn’t have the skills required to reach their goal, but she understood that an attention to detail, and appearances, went an incredibly long way to shaping one’s image. And there was no harm in offering rather pedestrian advice to someone who, for all her apparent similarities to Jamie, was likely rather pedestrian herself.

Jamie laughed at the question. “Oh, I’m giving you this advice free of charge,” she said, playing along with the joke in an uncharacteristically light-hearted way. She had warmed to Grace remarkably quickly, and was enjoying her company. The other woman might not have been her intellectual equal, but they seemed to have a fair few things in common, and that was enough to tolerate her company with much more ease than Jamie might have with anyone else. And, she had to admit to herself, that the bar had been set incredibly low in Echo Springs. It was a place seemingly populated with hicks and fools, and the occasional deeply unpleasant character.

So, she was rather pleasantly surprised when Grace asked if she had experience with ‘all of this’. It wasn’t a wildly impressive conclusion to draw – it was, in fact, quite an easy assumption to make, given the advice Jamie had offered her thus far – but it was still enough to illicit some surprise. And, for an odd moment, Jamie felt a sense which she could only describe as a lacking, as if she should have been able to answer Grace’s comments with more examples than those which came to mind. Her tweed-wearing, stuffed-shirt, male colleagues at the museum came instantly to mind, and the British carbon copies she had worked with in England also, but she felt as if she should have more experience with men to draw from. Much more. This feeling of absence seemed to be drawn from the same source as the strange lack of danger she had felt around Kaz Brekker, despite the fact he’d been an armed man, and she had been a lone woman at night. It was so surreal that it took Jamie a moment to mentally right herself, and focus on this discussion at hand.

Luckily, a lifetime of hiding her dimly-felt emotions, and wearing a mask in company, allowed her to hide this brief, odd, turmoil. The only sign that it had been there at all was the pause between Grace’s question, and Jamie’s given answer. “Yes, I do have some experience,” she said. “My field – heritage work – attracts a particular subspecies of man. Balding, socially inept, gentlemen who seem to think that museums are no places for women. Or, indeed, if we are graced with permission to work with them, we are always seen as women in a man’s world.” She was speaking in a pleasant tone, even smiling conspiratorially, but there was a cold undercurrent to her voice that made her true feelings quite clear. “The world of history, conservation, and restoration, belongs to men, I’m afraid. It isn’t enough that they own the present. They feel the need to keep a firm grip on the past as well.”

She watched Grace for a moment, still smiling, and added, “It is the same the world over, unfortunately. But, one carries on. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, Ms Le Domas.”

From the other woman’s description it was very apparent that Jamie had definitely gotten some experience dealing with annoying male egos in the workplace, at least that made sense why her advice had been so good. “That sounds like pretty much everyone on the board of my company” She grimaces, her nose scrunched up in distaste as her mind can’t help but conjure up the image of all the old white men that sat around the board table and looked on her with disdain. She was pretty sure her face had reflected that right back at them. Grace was about as thrilled to have been thrown into the role in place of a man as they were to have a young woman with no experience as their boss. She could fake it until she made it all she wanted, but until the stuffy men at the table got over their butthurt Grace knew it would just go on as it was now.

Grace taps the ash away from her cigarette before raising it to her lips for another drag. “I’m afraid I don’t have the fancy education that my hus- my uh, in laws had” She smiles to hide the slip up, she didn’t like referring to Alex as her husband anymore but those that knew him and regarded her as his widow expected it of her which was a hard line to balance “what you said sounded good, but it means nothing to me and my public school education.”

The way she ran her fingers over the inscription had Kaz trying to recall what was written on the leather - it was a bit older, a bit more worn, than he’d expect from someone who had newly come into money. Not hers first, most likely. He studied and noted the lettering: D.L.D.. He was sure the L.D. stood for Le Domas, but there was no mistaking that the first letter was a D, rather than a G, so definitely not hers. If something had someone else’s initials, it was more likely a sentimental choice and not one borne of practicality. 

He wracked his mind for other members of the Le Domas family, but he didn’t know much about the case. It had been an interesting one, but newly acquired money was always harder to liberate from its owner, and his own dealings had him busy enough as it was. But this was an interesting puzzle, a new bit of information he could learn about a town resident. 

That, we have in common, he wanted to say. Kaz Brekker knew better than most the dark things that one did in order to survive, the way that the wounded animal lashed out from its cage. “I don’t. I prefer to hear it directly from the horse.” He said with a small smile at his own jest. “Then tell me - what do you remember of that night? Call it professional curiosity.”

“And why would I tell you anything about that night?” Grace stares him down “Your professional curiosity be damned.” She had given the version of events that she could recall to the police, and then after that had recounted it all over again for the formal investigation. To those people she knew that she owed some kind of explanation, but to this man she owed absolutely nothing. The phantom pain in her left hand spread to the scar on her shoulder, two sites that had been her worst injuries acting up as if they were trying to make her relive the same pain that she’d dealt with the first time around. Grace resisted the urge to rub the spot on her left palm, she had a feeling this guy would pick up on it pretty quickly and she really didn’t want to accidentally further his curiosity.