#keeping time

My Hobby: Pausing in-store music for a split second and watching the ex-marching band kids stumble.

Bran stared at the collection of diaries on his desk. They could have been encyclopedias, they were almost literally reference books at this point. Leah had painstakingly pulled them out of the crawl space above her closet because she’d run out of shelf room. 

Of course, if she had mentioned them he might have found it in him to give her a new shelf. 

Wed. 23 Feb 1859

Leah marked one full, dark circle. 

There was a 3 written in her hand, crossed through, and a 7 noted next to it. Then there was an arc with its ends pointed downward. 

It was like foreign code. 

Leah sat across from him, tapping her foot impatiently because she knew he couldn’t read it. This was why he’d called her in. He’d gone through her things first, had discovered one of her old diaries in a box under the bed and couldn’t understand it. He’d asked to see more. 

“Do you know what it means?” He asked her. 

She peered over at the page before him, blinked at it once, and then nodded. 

“Don’t tell me.”

He would figure it out for himself. 

***

Bran was pouring over runes when Anna walked in with the baby strapped to her chest. She took one look at the state of his office and looked as if she wanted to turn around. 

So clearly she had a question. 

“Is there something you’re looking for in your old planners?” She gestured to the mess

“Diaries. They’re Leah’s.” It was a mess. He had been making copies onto a note pad of ones that were notable to him. The first was Wed. 23 Feb. 1859 just because he’d had Leah in his office for it. “I’m looking at things.”

Anna looked at that one first, probably because the page was still open in front of him. 

“And you’re…tracking Leah’s cycles?” She sounded confused and when he looked up at her baffled, she tapped the filled-in circle on the page and then gestured to his own notes. “Some women mark that as a period. Maybe she usually had a three day cycle but had a seven-day?” 

Anna paused as if she had realized something and tugged the book out from underneath his fingers. “No. It’s not her cycle. It’s the lunar cycle. She marks the new moon.” 

Anna had unceremoniously flipped to the back of the book for a Christmas Eve open circle and placed it back in front of him. 

“You must have added pack that night. Maybe she’s marking how big you were.”

Bran uncharacteristically chewed on his lip thoughtfully, looking up at Anna. He had records for things like that he could compare to. 

“Thank you, Anna.”

***

The numbers did not coincide with pack rosters. Nor did they coincide with out-of-season Changes. 1859 was before they had a designated day, he wouldn’t have been surprised.  She did mark those in her own way, with a plus or a minus. He thought she maybe made it as a reminder to reference his own notes. Leah was unfortunately good with secrets. 

Sixteenth of March, 1900. She marked another full moon, eight, eleven, twelve, and fifteen were all scratched out. Finally, she had circled a seventeen and marked an arc with the ends pointed down again. 

Other notes included “spring soon,” that was the worm moon so that tracked, “pack dinner. Fish?”, and “Samuel returned.”  Bran had noted earlier an 1876 edition where Samuel had left. His son had travelled in and out over the years. 

He flipped the pages mindlessly. 

Sat. 31 March 1900 she marked “D1” then made a strike through it and jotted a question mark. Then there was a 3 and an arc with the ends pointed upwards. This was not the first time he’d seen that, but he wasn’t sure what the arcs meant. 

April first through third were marked sequentially D2-D4. All of those had lines through them and question marks next to them. On April 1, Leah had noted a separate 2 and then crossed it out to put 4. The arc ends pointed up. The second of April had a 2, this one had remained a 2, and the arc ends again pointed up. The third had a 6 and the arc ends pointed down. 

That ended the question marks, unfortunately. Or, so he thought, because he flipped a few pages forward and saw a big X in the center of the page and circled on April 15. There was also a “D1?” no strikethrough, a 1, and an arc with the ends pointed down. The opposite page to the left was April 14 and marked a full moon. The arc was a straight line. There was a nine beside it. 

Bran’s stomach sank as he turned his finger back to the 15th of April. 

“Miscarriage.” He muttered. 

Leah had been marking cycles but with Ds and subsequent numbers. Days one through four, his mind supplied. He’d seen them through all of her diaries. 

Damn.

***

Bran had to start again from the beginning and started making note of any big X’s. Leah’s first daily diary had been the one from 1859. They probably hadn’t made it to a town for a real calendar before that or, if they had, they hadn’t lived somewhere she could store them. 

Between 1859 and 1915, where he’d read to, was a span of fifty-six years. In fifty-six years, Leah had thankfully only noted seventeen miscarriages. Seventeen that he’d been completely unaware of.

For a large chunk of 1859 she hadn’t actually noted menstruation, but by the middle of 1860 she had started. It looked as if pregnancy threw her off rhythm until the moon eventually took her back onto a lunar cycle. He wondered if it were changes interspersed that also threw off that circadian rhythm. 

Interesting. Maybe he could pay Samuel to look into that. He knew most female werewolves ultimately synced with the moon so he hadn’t really expected to have written timelines as to when Leah didn’t quite do that. Now he was curious. 

But the numbers and the arcs still eluded him. 

***

Leah, it turned out, hadn’t changed her personal form of shorthand. Bran stole her diary when she was out so that he could compare more recent events. 

The tips of his ears flushed when he realized and he didn’t speak to Leah for four days afterwards, only locked himself away in his officebecause he had to go back through. 

Thirty-three was the highest number from 1859 through to 1924. It was the day before a full moon. There was an arc with the ends on the bottom. Halfway through the scratched out numbers, she had moved into tally marks. 

On his own day five, he emerged. 

“Are you tracking your orgasms?”

Leah turned to look at him over her shoulder as if he’d just asked the most mundane question imaginable. “Don’t be stupid.”

That was the only thing that made sense when he had compared the old diaries to now. 

“I’m tracking yours.”

Bran could honestly say he had never heard the half-strangled sound that escaped him in that moment ever before. He’d never known he was capable of such a noise and he never wanted to make it again. 

He fled back to his office. 

Thirty-three. There were only twenty-four hours in a day. That couldn’t be possible. 

He flipped through a few more, getting himself to 1927 before remembering the arcs. One last mystery to solve. 

And he was not any closer. 

***

“I should tell you it’s not orgasm-specific. It’s number of times we’ve  coupled.” She told him over dinner a few days later when he thought he was safe. “Are you trying to learn something about me from my diaries?”

“Ah, yes. You have always noted what we’re eating for dinner.” He said casually to change the topic. “I never realized.”

Leah put her fork down, her brow wrinkled and then she gestured to the pantry. 

“I was the one minding the stores.” She reminded as if it were obvious. “I had to make sure we survived winter and bad harvests. It was easier that way.”

Of course, he remembered she used to have notebooks to keep track categorically of what lived on their shelves and in their root cellar. Leah had always been good at that sort of thing. She was methodical in everything. 

Perfect. 

“And it’s more cost-effective if I buy for what we need now that we have grocery stores.” She went back to eating, though she stabbed at her piece of chicken maybe a little more aggressively than she would normally. “Habit worked so the habit stuck.”

Very typical for Leah. He shouldn’t be the least bit surprised. 

“The code is related to things you didn’t want me to know you were tracking.”

“It’s a little embarrassing to say you’re tracking your intimacy.” Leah agreed, now flipping through her phone because she knew it drove him insane. Bran hated phones at the table. “That was also an unfortunate habit that stuck.”

She looked up across the table at him without really raising her head from her phone. He was supposed to be seeing something. Leah was giving him a hint. 

And it was beyond him. 

“Is there a reason you got into the habit?”

Leah smiled and went back to her phone. 

***

Bran was none the wiser about the trend in her planner-keeping for a long while. It was actually Samuel, calling to check in on Charles via a surrogate (himself), that triggered a more substantial clue. 

“Leah always kept diaries, even when we were with Charles’ people. You remember? She used to track everything. I don’t think she knew how to read back then, at least she wasn’t very good at writing. It was all symbol. I’m sure she saved none of that, so much of it wouldn’t have been able to be cataloged.” His son hummed. “No. She taught Charles his letters, I think. It wasn’t me and it certainly wasn’t you. She had to know something.  So she’s been keeping a code that long and you can’t decipher it?”

“Charles.” Bran said, because the thought never would have occurred to him. Leah might have inadvertently taught Charles something of her record keeping. 

And, of the three Cornicks-by-blood, it wasn’t the doctor who was the best record-keeper, nor was it Bran himself who meticulously kept almost everything. 

It’s Charles. 

“And she told you that most of the things she tracked were by habit?” Samuel asked again. “Cycles, probably. Women do that sort of thing.”

His eldest, Bran realized, was about as thick as he was. 

“And other things. Our dinners for the last century-and-a-half now live on my shelf.” He admitted. “The lunar cycle as well.” 

“Yeah. I’d talk to Charles.”

***

Charles looked momentarily confused by the diary his father handed to him. Bran stepped back to look at his youngest and frowned a moment. 

Sometimes the Wildings got bags under their eyes. It was probably a nutrition thing, Samuel said. Werewolves didn’t lose sleep visibly the way humans did. 

Charles was struggling. 

“Have you been sleeping?”

His son gave him a bored sort of expression in response as if Bran were an idiot for asking. 

Maybe he was. 

“Are these mine?” He asked instead, turning to the first page of the one Bran had handed him open. 

“Leah’s. Why would you—“ Bran cut himself off. “Samuel did ask who taught you letters.”

Charles looked up at him again with the same, carefully-blank expression. 

“Certainly not you. You wanted nothing to do with me.”  A baby cried further back in the house. “Seems to run in the family.”

Bran grimaced. “Leah would have taught you, then.”

He would have to have a conversation with Samuel about using him as a middle-man. Perhaps “Uncle Samuel” could call now and then and check in on the baby himself. 

“And scripture.” Charles agreed. “She’s also the only one who learned Salish, if you cared to know.”

Bran had forgotten the reason he’d been avoiding Charles. Anna wasn’t necessarily more forgiving, but she liked to play the field the way Bran did. She wanted to know all of everyone’s business and he wasn’t sure Anna’s ultimate goal was actually peace, but she certainly had some goal she wasn’t letting on. 

Charles was currently angry with him, and rightfully so. 

“I am so happy you found a peace with each other.” Bran agreed tightly. “Did Leah teach you what any of this meant?”

Charles looked over the page again, frowned, and then tapped the circle. “These are moons. She taught me how, no, let me rephrase.” He seemed to think. “Leah taught me that it was important to track the moon so that I understood why I felt certain ways.”

That made sense. Charles had been born a werewolf and he’d had very little in ways of being taught. 

His son tapped the ever-elusive arc thoughtfully. 

“I remember this. I don’t…” He frowned and shook his head, looking like he was very much trying to remember. “It ties into the cycle, I think. It might be her own changes?”

Bran shook his head. “No. She has them marked during times where I think she was pregnant and didn’t miscarry until the full moon. She wouldn’t be successfully changing in that time without disrupting the fetus.” 

Charles hummed and tapped it again. “I don’t still track anything and I don’t think I have anything saved. Leah is more meticulous with that than even I am…” 

He trailed off.

“Mood?” Charles suggested. “Could it be her mood?”

“You think Leah was keeping a chart of her mood?” Bran snorted because it sounded ridiculous.  “She said she just kept going out of habit. It has to be something that would have mattered to her. Everything on this page is clockwork.”

Charles shrugged. “My moods, maybe? It might have mattered to her once-upon-a-time, when she was minding me.” That sounded slightly more like Leah but also more preposterous. “But she’d have to be asking people. I don’t see her every day. I don’t think I interacted with her every day even then. What are the numbers she’s scratched out?”

Bran tried to keep his face carefully guarded, but for once Charles actually saw straight through it. 

“Something the matter?”

“She tracks how often we have sex.” Bran grit his teeth. “No. I didn’t know she was doing it. No, I don’t know why, she didn’t feel like telling me.”

Charles who, of his two surviving sons was often the more unreadable, grimaced as if he really didn’t need to think about that. Bran glanced down, horrified to see that his son had unfortunately turned to a series of two page where the numbers were horrifically high. Charles, apparently thinking the same thing, turned to the next page and then frowned. 

“It’s your mood.”

He looked up at his father again, carefully neutral expression back on his face. 

“Do I ask how you know that?”

Charles grabbed a spare piece of apparent junk mail and a pen and scribbled a near dead-ringer for Leah’s page in his own hand on the back. He carefully tapped the “18” he’d scrawled with the point of his pen and looked up and then moved the point to the arc with the ends facing downward. Above it, Charles made two little dots for eyes as drew a circle around it. 

A frowning face. 

“You didn’t used to be quiet about the fact you had sex when you were angry.”

Bran snatched the book back. 

***

Bran cleared his throat and Leah turned, hands on her hips. 

“Did I scare you?” 

“No, I heard you come in.” She snorted and turned back to whatever she had been doing. Bran couldn’t tell from this angle, but he smelled yeast so he suspected bread. 

“I mean before, when you were tracking my moods. Was I hurting you and you were too scared to tell me?”

“There’s a thought.” She muttered, seemingly to herself. 

Bran approached her, stopping just before he crossed into her prep space for real. Leah hated being bothered in the kitchen. 

“I am sorry for it, if I did.” He offered. “I only wish you had told me.”

Leah spun back to face him, tucking a stray strand of short hair behind her ear and leaning back on the counter behind her. 

“It was mostly born of boredom and maybe of showing Charles.” She admitted slowly. “And then it became habit. And then I started noticing an actual trend.  At some point I just kept doing it.”

Leah turned back to her bread and very much did not look at him. 

“How far did you get?”

“I got to Mercy.” Because he knew that’s why she was asking. Of course it was why she was asking. Her shoulders tensed, but she didn’t look at him. “The second set of lines are her or are they you?”

Leah didn’t immediately answer and he truthfully wasn’t sure if he should expect her to remember that far. 

“The lines are her.” Leah dropped her head back once only to roll her shoulders and she straightened again. “I’m not proud of the fact I tracked her. I don’t care that I tracked you. You’re mine. But I shouldn’t have invaded her privacy in that manner.”

The shiver he’d felt at her words shocked Bran first and foremost. He didn’t think Leah had ever used that word to describe him. Maybe she had and he’d been oblivious. More shocking yet was her confession and subsequent admission of guilt. 

“I don’t think tracking Mercy’s mood is all that invasive, truthfully.”

It wouldn’t actually shock Bran if everyone tracked Mercy a little bit just to make sure they stayed in her good side. She had been scary as a child in her own right. 

“How far into her years did you get, Bran?”

He had to do the math. Leah hadn’t started until Mercy was maybe seven or eight, which was probably around the time he’d started to grow fond of her. It was when Mercy had started her torment and reign of terror. 

“Maybe ten?”

The silence was colder than the room. Leah didn’t seem to know what to say. Bran thought maybe he didn’t want to hear it. 

“Go pull one from the pile. ‘86, I should think.” She told him. “Bring it down. I don’t remember where you’ll need to flip to, but you may as well bring 1987 down, too in case.”

This felt strange, but Bran did as he was directed to. He sifted through the diaries he hadn’t yet come to and pulled the correct years. For good measure, he brought down a third—1988–just in case. 

Leah hadn’t been waiting for him, she was continuing her work and was elbow deep in flour. Now he noted the addition of several bowls to the oven which was on its proof setting. Baking wasn’t something Leah particularly enjoyed, but she tended to bulk-make bread for some reason. She claimed kneading dough was therapeutic. 

Maybe he’d been stressing her out with his study of her chronicles. 

“I have dough all over me. You’ll have to flip through. It should be on the right side of the page, though.” 

Bran began at January, as one tended to, and slowly made his way through page-by-page. The right side of the page always had at least one line, but often had two. He mentally recalled that this would have been a time where Leah had truly started borderline-stalking Mercy so she might have noticed her mood more frequently. 

And then he found it. September 1986. 

Bran said nothing at first because he wasn’t sure yet that there was much to say. He made mental note of the dates and the corresponding moods and moved on. And then he started paying closer attention to all of it. 

He worked his way through the two subsequent years as well, panic very well settling in. 

“You had every reason to believe I was having an affair.” It looked very much that way on paper. 

“It was an invasion of her privacy and she didn’t deserve that. I was being petty.”

Bran opened his mouth, closed it, frowned, and then finally found the words he thought might not upset her. “It was absolutely invasive.” He agreed slowly, watching her because she was again staring at him. “But I don’t think it was petty. On paper, it looks bad. I see why you did it.”

Leah was unreadable, but he thought she looked like she had relaxed. Normally, they’d have a big argument over something like this and she’d accuse him of being overly defensive of Mercy. He’d say something cruel. They’d both escape to separate rooms of the house. 

Like clockwork. 

“I’ll work on it.” He promised, feeling a little lost at what to say now. “On being happier for you.”

She paused, glanced over her shoulder at him because she had once again turned away, and he thought she might say something else. 

He knew she wanted to say something else. 

But she didn’t. She just thanked him and went back to kneading.