Page 24 of Carved

I finish my wine and move through my apartment with purpose, heading toward the bedroom closet. Past the carefully organized professional wardrobe, past the shoes arranged by color and type, to the back corner where a small fireproof safe sits behind a panel of hanging dresses.

The combination is burned into my muscle memory: 10-20-16. The date everything changed. The date Harry Jenkins died and Delilah Jenkins began the process of becoming someone else entirely.

Inside the safe, beneath insurance documents and my passport, lies a manila folder that I haven't opened in over a year. But I've never been able to throw it away, never been able to fully let go of the evidence that the most important relationship of my life actually happened.

My hands shake slightly as I withdraw the folder and carry it back to the living room. The weight of it feels heavier than it should, as if the contents have somehow accumulated gravity over the years of hiding.

I settle onto my sofa and set the folder on my coffee table, staring at it like it might explode if I open it too quickly. Inside are photocopies of police reports, newspaper clippings, and crime scene photographs that I should never have been able to access. There are also things that belong only to me—letters written in careful block handwriting, receipts and ticket stubs that marked the strange courtship of two damaged people who understood each other in ways that probably weren't healthy.

For months after my father's death, this folder was all I had. The only evidence that it had all really happened. I'd read and reread every document until I could recite them from memory, analyzing each word like scripture.

It hadn’t just been Janine who had helped me rebuild.

But I never threw it away. Never could bring myself to destroy the only proof that I'd once felt something other than numbness.

Now, sitting in my sterile apartment with expensive wine burning in my stomach and Janine's accusations still ringing in my ears, I understand why I kept it. Not as a memorial to the past, but as preparation for the possibility that the past might come looking for me.

The folder's edge is worn soft from handling, the manila paper faded but still intact. I trace the tab where I'd written "Personal—D.J." in careful letters, back when I still thought of myself as Delilah. Back when I believed that loving someone dangerous made me brave rather than foolish.

I don't open it. Not yet. Just holding it is enough to bring the memories flooding back—the weight of secrets shared in careful letters, the intoxicating knowledge that someone saw the darkness in me and didn't try to cure it. The terrifying thrill of being understood by someone who should have been my enemy.

Kent had seen something in sixteen-year-old Delilah Jenkins that no one else had ever noticed. Not damaged goods to be fixed or a victim to be pitied, but an equal. Someone capable of walking in dark places without losing herself entirely.

He'd been wrong about that last part, of course. I had lost myself. I'd rebuilt Lila North from the ashes of Delilah Jenkins, created someone stronger and smarter and more controlled.Someone who could function in the world without the constant threat of falling apart.

But maybe, tonight, I don't want to be controlled anymore.

Maybe I want to be the girl who thanked a killer for saving her and meant it.

The decision forms slowly, crystallizing like wine settling in an expensive glass.

I want to know what happens when the person you used to be meets the person you've become.

The folder sits on my coffee table like a loaded gun, full of dangerous possibilities and half-remembered promises. Tomorrow, I'll have to decide whether to open it. Whether to dive back into memories that have the power to destroy everything I've built.

But tonight, just knowing it's there is enough. Tonight, after a minor eternity, I feel truly alive.

And I'm not sure I care what it costs me.

Chapter 6 - Kent

OCTOBER 2016

I don't sleep. How the fuck can I?

Instead, I lie on the narrow fold-out bed that serves as both couch and sleeping space in the trailer, staring at the water stain on the ceiling where the roof leaked last winter. The aluminum walls are thin enough that I can hear every car that passes on the road outside, every neighbor's television, every argument from the trailer three lots down.

The sound of Delilah Jenkins’ crying follows me into the pre-dawn hours like a ghost I can't exorcise.

By six a.m., I give up the pretense of rest and make coffee on the two-burner stovetop, using the percolator I bought secondhand because the trailer came without a coffee maker. My hands still shake when I'm not paying attention, trembling slightly as I measure grounds into the metal basket.

The rational part of my mind—the part that's kept me alive and uncaught for two years now—catalogs the reasons why last night was a stupid fucking mistake. Why getting involved, even peripherally, in Harry Jenkins's personal life violates every rule I've built for myself. He’s acop,Jesus Christ.

I don't get emotionally invested in targets. I don't deviate from carefully laid plans. I don't let personal feelings compromise operational security.

But I can't stop thinking about the way she apologized for being hurt.

I'm sorry, Dad. I don't know where they could be. I really don't.