“Is that why you screamed in the forest?” March said, catching me by surprise until I remembered that he had my memories.
“Yes.”
March’s eyes took a slow stroll all over my face. They were so beautiful, even with the colors a bit darkened like that.
“Is that why you hated it when your parents hugged you?”
I looked down at my lap. Nobody was ever supposed toseethat. Nobody was ever supposed toknowwhat it felt like inside me then—but here I was.
“Who was the man who stabbed you in the kitchen?” I don’t know why I asked this—perhaps I wanted to see what he’d say?
“My father,” said March without hesitation.
The gears inside me came to a halt for a split second.
His father had stabbed him—and suddenly I wanted to find his father and set him on fire. Some sort of feeling of possessiveness took over me in the lack of something…else.
But March wasmine,wasn’t he? He was mine and nobody got to stab him.
“When she died, everything stopped,” I said, not entirelysure Iwantedto say it, but not sure Ididn’t wantto say it, either. “I waited for the world to stop with me, and when it didn’t, I started keeping to myself. Not my parents, though. They found ways to survive it.” Which was exactly how it should have been, wasn’t it? “But I didn’t want survival—I wanted her back. And when that didn’t happen, I guess, I…wanted someone to stay broken with me.”
“We all do,” March said when I paused. “It makes things easier to digest.”
It did. “Maybe I wantedthemto stay broken with me because nobody else really understood. They just…they were able to fold our loss into their lives so neatly, pack it away—when for me it was still everywhere.”
“And so you began to resent them for it.” He was calm—not sorry. Like he could read my mind and know exactly what to say, andhowto say it.
I didn’t need his sorry, nor anyone else’s. But I guessed it was nice if he…understood.
So I nodded. “A little bit. I carried her absence like proof thatIloved hermorethan they did. Which wasn’t fair, I don’t think.” Not everyone handled life the same way. This I knew well.
“Fairhas nothing to do with it,” March said, shaking his head. “Have you ever considered that they were pretending to have been done with the grief foryoursake?”
“I have.” Except I knew my parents, and… “I think it was more that they were happy and thankful that they still hadme.” Which sounded sowrongwhen I said it out loud.
I looked at March, expected the judgment.
Instead he said, “So you resented yourself, too.”
Well…yes,actually. I had.
Pulling my lips inside my mouth, I looked down at my lap again, wondering if this had been a mistake. I’d never spoken about this with anyone before. And this wasnotwhat I meantwhen I told him I wanted to see him later. I didn’t want totalk—what was even the point, anyway?
“May I?” March said, and he’d already grabbed my sketchbook off the table in front of us, but I nodded again just to make sure he took it. Was distracted by it while I got myself together.
Except I didn’t really need to, turns out. I was way more interested in looking at his face as he went over my sketches. I wanted to see what his eyes looked like when he saw the details of him and the faces of the other Hands I’d already put on paper. I’d been in a rush—there was barely enough time—and they still needed work, but I thought he’d recognize himself just fine. More than a handful of the first drawings were of him.
He did.
His eyes when he looked at me next were darker yet, his gaze so intense I felt it like a physical touch.
Then he turned the page.
“Do you wish you’d given up a different memory, if you’d known I’d see it?”
Even his voice had transformed just now. Lower. Darker.
I crossed my legs and rubbed away the goose bumps on my forearms as casually as I could.
