From the diaryof Rex Roy, aged twelve. . .
Today,I found someone to live for. Hamish found me at my parents’ grave, but instead of telling me to return to the manse, he brought a newspaper to read while he waited with me.
It was her face that caught my attention first. She was scared and sad and mad all at the same time. It’s a mix that I’ve felt, but no one understands.
It was strange to see what I felt on someone else’s face. Strange and good.
She’s like me.
Hamish says they shouldn’t put kids’ pictures in the paper like that. I agree, but I’m glad they did. Otherwise, I never would’ve known about her.
They said her name was Enara. I stole Hamish’s phone and looked it up, and it means Swallow. I’m going to find her and tell her she’s like me.
She watched her family die, like me. She has no one like me.
Maybe we can have each other.
I have to find her, and then we’ll be a family.
I can’t wait to tell her.
I know when I do, she’ll still be sad/mad/scared, but it will help her to know she doesn’t have to be alone.
* * *
Inara
I read them all.Every journal, every note. A written history of how, years ago, a younger Rex had tried to find me.
Tried and failed. His journal entries grow more frustrated over the years. The article printed my name wrong, which sent him on the wrong trail for a while. By the time he figured it out and enlisted Hamish’s help, I had disappeared into the system. His private investigator had found nothing.
But he never stopped searching. My heart weeps for the boy who was so angry and alone. I could weep for myself, too, the tears overflowing from the wellspring of pain I’ve kept tamped down over the years, thinking I was the only one who’d understand the depth of my loss.
There was someone out there who was like me. And after all the years of searching, he’s found me.
I lay the journals back in the drawer and leave the room. I feel like I’ve wept for days, but when I touch my face, it’s dry. There are no more tears. Just a big empty space where my heart used to be.
This is what he wouldn’t tell me. He’s been obsessed with me for years. The most horrible night of my life shattered everything I am and bound me to him.
I don’t know how to feel. I feel everything and nothing. What does it matter how I feel? I was meant to be here.
I can only continue on, drawn by a compulsion to discover the full truth about him. I will plumb his depths as he’s plumbed mine and drown in his perfect darkness.
This is the course I laid out for myself. I’m here because I want to know everything about him. I just didn’t realize he already knew everything about me.
Well, not everything. I still have some secrets, but I don’t know how long I can hold onto them. Something tells me Rex will be inexorable in his desire to peel me apart and own all of me. It’s a risk I’m willing to take to get close enough to him to find evidence of his crimes.
The scariest thing is that a part of me wants him to know everything about me. I have to fight my own desires to walk this dangerous line.
I creep forward, continuing my search for Rex’s secrets. My instincts pull me down the hall to the elevator. The doors glide open, and the keypad lights up, ready for me to input a code.
I consider what it might be. Rex’s birthday? The date his mother or father married?
The date they died?
I plug those six digits in, and the keypad beeps, blinking red. Wrong.
Could it be my birthday? I think of that and discard it.
