My stomach drops as the implications hit me. I shouldn't know about the bear. I shouldn't know the exact words Kevin and Claire said to each other. I shouldn't know what it felt like to be six years old, clutching a stuffed animal while your world falls apart.
But I do.
I remember the night it happened—hearing something through our shared wall. Shouting. A door slamming. I was probably eight or nine, and I looked out my own window when I heard the commotion. I saw someone walking away under the streetlight, but I didn't think much of it at the time.
I never told Bree I saw her mother leave.
And she never told me she watched it happen.
So how do I know?
The mist swirls closer, and I feel something tug at my chest—like a thread pulling tight. The sensation is foreign but familiar, like déjà vu made physical.
I need air. I need space. I need to think.
The kitchen is dark when I walk downstairs, but I'm not surprised to find I'm not alone. Rhett leans against the counter, his broad frame silhouetted in the faint light from the window. He doesn't look surprised to see me either.
We stare at each other for a long moment.
"You felt it too," he says quietly. It's not a question.
I don't answer right away. Can't. Because admitting it makes it real, and I'm not ready for this to be real.
"It wasn't a dream," I say finally.
"No." Rhett's voice is rough, like he's been awake for hours. "I don't think it was."
Footsteps on the stairs draw our attention. Wes appears in the doorway, his dark hair sticking up at odd angles, eyes bloodshot. He doesn't speak, just goes straight to the cabinet and pulls out a box of cereal. Starts eating it dry, straight from the box.
None of us comment on how his hands shake slightly.
"The bear," I say, testing the words. "She had a stuffed bear. Brown, with a torn ear."
Rhett nods slowly. "She called it Bear. Real creative, our Bree."
"She used to bring it to sleepovers," Wes adds, his voice quiet. "Until she got too old and started leaving it at home."
We all knew about the bear.
But we shouldn’t know how it felt in our hands that night.
Shouldn’t know the comfort of pressing our face into its worn fur—while our world shattered around us
"This is impossible," I whisper.
"Yeah," Rhett agrees. "But here we are."
The mist drifts between us, silent and knowing. And I wonder what any of this means now. I think about Bree upstairs, probably asleep in that big bed we built for her. Does she know what's happening? Can she feel us the way we felt her?
"What happened when she touched that crown?" Wes asks, echoing my thoughts.
"I don't know." I lean against the wall, trying to process the implications. "But something bled through. Her memory became... ours."
"Just hers?" Rhett's voice carries an edge of something I can't identify. "Or all of them?"
The thought sends a chill down my spine. Bree has decades of memories I've never seen. Trauma I've only glimpsed the edges of. If they start bleeding through like this one did...
"We need to tell her," Wes says.
