I stop.
"You didn't want what?" His tone is careful. Not pressing. Leaving me the option to not finish.
"I didn't want to be her." The words feel strange in the open air. True. "Strong enough to survive it but not to escape it. Scared for twenty years. I wanted to be different."
He's very still across the kitchen. Then: "You are different."
I almost say something dismissive. Almost deflect it. Instead, I just let it sit there, the way he let my words sit.
"She'd have liked you," I say, finally. "My mam. She liked people who were honest, even when the honesty was brutal." I glance at him. "You're honest."
"I don't have energy left for anything else."
"No." I study him. The lines of exhaustion still around his eyes. The way he's holding himself. Present, for the first time since I met him. Just here, in this kitchen, in his own skin. "I know."
Later, I can't sleep.
I lie in the dark listening to the house settle around me, and I think about my mother, which I don't let myself do very often. The cost of opening that door. But it's already open now, cracked by the conversation in the kitchen, and I can't close it. I think about her hands. The way she could make pastry without measuring anything. The smell of her hair when I was small enough to lean against her.
Eleven years, and it still comes in waves.
I'm not sure when I start crying. I only notice it when the pillow is wet. Not loud. Just the quiet kind that happens when you've been holding something tightly for a long time and your grip finally slips.
The door is open. I didn't close it all the way.
Footsteps in the hall. I wipe my face with my sleeve.
William stops in the doorway. He doesn't ask. He can see. He's looking at me with an expression that has no calculation in it, none of the careful measuring I saw from him in those first days. Just open. Just present.
He crosses the room and sits on the edge of the bed.
Neither of us says anything.
After a while, he lies down beside me, on top of the covers, and stares at the ceiling, and I go back to staring at it, too. Our arms are close enough that I could feel the warmth of him without touching.
"Tell me something," I say.
"What?"
"Anything. Something true."
He thinks about it. "When I was eight," he says, "I was convinced I was going to be an architect. I drew buildings constantly. Covered notebooks. Jason caught me once, and I told him they were weapons designs so he wouldn't laugh."
I turn my head to look at him.
"Did he laugh anyway?"
"Obviously." There's something soft in it. "He kept one of them. Found it in his room years later. He'd never told me." A pause. "He's a good man, Jason. Better than me."
"That's not true."
"I've done things—"
"He has too. You all have." I shift to face him. "You're not a list of your worst moments."
He turns his head. We're close. The lamplight from the hall is just enough to see by. His eyes are darker than usual, the shadows under them softened now, a little. Like something in his face has eased.
He reaches up and touches my face. Slowly. Asking.
