My fingers drift up to her mouth, my thumb pressing under her lip, dragging slow, tracing the shape of something I’ve touched a thousand times in my dreams.
“You told me to be quiet.”
I can still hear her voice when she said it the first time. The way it sounded like a secret we were keeping from God. Or maybe it wasn’t the first time. Maybe it was the hundredth. Maybe we’ve been doing this for centuries.
“You told me if I was quiet, he’d leave me alone.” My breath hitches. “You said the quiet place would keep me safe.”
I press my forehead to hers, eyes squeezed shut, dragging the chain tighter. Locking her down. Locking me down. Trying to keep the timeline from slipping through my fingers like sand.
“You said you wouldn’t leave.”
The words loop.
You said you wouldn’t leave.
You said you wouldn’t leave.
You said you wouldn’t leave.
But she did.
The chapel burns behind my eyes again. I feel the heat on my face. The smoke in my lungs. The scrape of the rosary beads against my palm—the wooden cross digging into my skin.
I see her?—
I see little her?—
Standing at the chapel door. The light from outside is so bright it makes her a silhouette. Was she leaving? Was she watching me go? Was she already gone?
I can’t tell.
The memory glitches. The light turns to blue static.
I don’t know if I was the one who walked out of the fire. Or if she did. I don’t know if I stayed in the basement. Or if I ran. I don’t know who locked the door and who was left inside.
I drag my nails down the chain, sharp, scraping the skin off my knuckles until they burn, until they sting, until they feel likenow. I need the pain to tell me where I am.
“You left me,” I whisper, but the words taste wrong. They taste like a confession.
Did she?
Or did I?
I press my lips to her temple, my breath breaking against her skin like a wave hitting the shore.
“You left me,” I say again, but this time, I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything but the metal in my hand.
Did she leave me? Or did I send her away to keep her clean? Or did I leave her there, in the memory, while I grew into this thing?
The memory snaps.
The chapel door. The quiet place. The rosary in my pocket. The sound of him breathing behind me—that wet, heavy sound of a man who thinks he’s holy.
I press my teeth into her shoulder until she gasps, until her breath catches, until she claws at me like she’s trying to hold me here in the present.
“Say you’ll stay,” I growl. It’s a command. A plea. A prayer.
Her voice cracks, tiny and fragile.
