Konnor’s gaze follows the box from the bag to the table, his brows drawing together. “Come.” I stand, grab the box, and walk to the rug, sitting down in the centre. I tap the spot opposite me. “Sit here. We can go through it together.”
With a long sigh, he joins me on the rug, with the box between us. With our past literally sitting between us.
“These are your memories,” I say, glancing up at Elise who watches us closely.
"Should I go?" Elise asks.
Konnor shakes his head. "No. I think you should stay. You wanted to know. And you're right, I owe you the truth." Exhaling hard, he opens the box.
My head spins when I see inside; our shared memories wash over me. He touches the multi-coloured pieces of paper with his fingers, without drawing them out. I’m overwhelmed with too many feelings at once.
He picks one up. "Should I read it?"
“Only if you want to."
He unfolds one, his eyes lapping the text, a small smile begins to play on his lips. "Deakon: D is for dream,” he says, chuckling softly, and I try not to cry. “E is for Everything, A is for Armour, K is for King, O is for Oath, N is for New." His face brightens. “Did you write that or did I?”
“Liz did when she was five.”
I realise that speaking about myself in third person is another level of insanity, but Erik, Dad, and I have been doing it for so long now, it’s almost default. It was meant to be a positive shift in terms, a way of separating all the negative feeling I had about being her, but… it feels wrong.
He unfolds another piece of paper. “It’s a song.”
Konnor reads the words aloud again, his voice shaking as he says, "It's called One Day."
One Day.
We'll race up the hill when the daisies are new, I'll get there first, but I'll always wait for you. We'll spin on the merry-go-round till we're sick, and eat all the hotdogs that we can fit. We'll stay out till dark and we won't have to hide, We'll hang with the birds who never once lied, We'll dance in the kitchen with no one to say that my guitar is too loud or we have to obey, We'll do all the things that the other kids do, normal and boring and easy and true. We'll yell from the hill, and we'll swear on our hands, That one day we'll live in the place that we planned. One day's almost here. One day we'll be ready. One day we won't fear. One day.
After he reads the last sentence, he is very still. "I thought–" He breathes out fast. "Fuck, that I'd never have this moment. Reassurance that everything that had happened was real. Thatyouare real. Your memory started to disappear. I fought to keep it, but I had no one to share it with. It was like I'd made you up. I'd made it all up."
Fuck.
I place my hand on his.
When he opens his eyes again, they are glossy. “Wow,” he breathes. “There is no way I wrote that song.” He looks sad and happy—an expression can be both. “Blesk, you’re a genius... How old were you when you wrote that?”
I glance at Elise, then back at him. “Eight.”
He puts his hand on my knee and strokes my leg tenderly. “Does it have a melody?”
I nod shyly. “It does now.”
He smiles at me. “Play it for meone day.”
“One day,” I say, as he hands me a piece of paper from the box, but I push it back towards him. “No, they’re yours.”
“They’re ours.” He gestures for me to take it.
Sighing, I unwrap the letter with shaky hands. I swallow hard at the sight of a crayon-drawn rainbow cake with six candles. I turn it to face him. “You drew this. For her birthday. She didn’t get a cake that year." My eyes meet Elise again, thinking she'd be uncomfortable by now, but she doesn't look that way, so I continue, "She didn’t get a cake most years."
Konnor’s jaw tightens. “Please stop talking about yourself in third person.”
“It’s just a habit.” Which is a lie. A habit you can break. This one is forced and chewed on and still comes out strongly.
“Well, I don’t like it.” Reaching over the box, he strokes my hair and runs a finger along my jaw. “I remember some things… not much, but… It’s like flashes.”
“What do you remember?”
