Page 27 of Remain

She pulls back just enough to look at me, tears streaking her cheeks, eyes searching. “The photos,” she manages through a stifled sob. “I found them last night.”

I freeze in place. I wondered what might happen back at the old Joy home, if Aunt Carol would have revealed everything.

“I don’t understand why you took them,” she continues. “Why you kept doing it… every year.”

“I took them for…”

Her phone lights up on the table.

I see it before she does.

A name I don’t recognize.

Jack

Hey. You disappeared again. Are you okay? I’m worried.

The screen glows between us, bright and unavoidable.

Savannah freezes.

I don’t look away. I don’t pretend I didn’t see it.

She swipes the screen dark with a shaky hand, face flushing, guilt and grief colliding in her expression.

“I’m sorry,” she panics. “That’s just…”

“You don’t have to explain.” I’m quick to respond and I mean it.

Something inside me still shifts and settles inside of me, a quiet reminder that there’s a version of her life I’m not part of and that someone else gets her when she leaves this place. Even so, she leans back into me, her forehead resting against my shoulder as if the interruption never happened. This moment still belongs to us, held gently and without question, and for now, it is ours.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do next,” she whispers. “I go back to New York and everything just… keeps going.”

I rest my cheek against her hair.

“And what do you want to do?” I ask. “What does Savannah Joy want?”

She doesn’t answer.

Her fingers tighten in mine instead.

I sit there holding her grief, her silence, the weight of what’s coming. I tell myself this is enough. Her head on my chest. Her hand in mine. That this is all I get.

So I stay, still.

11

Savannah

Christmas Eveat Aunt Carol’s smells like garlic, tomato basil sauce and something baked too long because no one was paying attention.

The lasagna sits heavy and perfect on the table, layers sagging at the edges, steam rising every time someone cuts into it. There are mismatched plates, too many forks, glasses from decades ago that aren’t pretty but still clink together when someone bumps into the table. It’s louder than my mother’s house ever was, and somehow that makes it easier to breathe.

I haven’t done this in years.

Now I’m here, squeezed between my grandmother and my cousin Lucy, knees brushing, wine warming my fingers.

Grandma pats my hand like she’s making sure I’m solid. “You’re too thin,” she says, as if this hasn’t always been her opening line since before I hit puberty.