Page 32 of Severed Heart

When he continues to linger in my doorway, I slit my eyes open again to see him still standing there,expectantly.

“What is it you do not understand? I told you, tomm—”

“I don’t have until tomorrow, Delphine.”

Both his delivery and tone are not those of a teenage boy but resolute and lined with desperation. His tone and disposition are familiar because of Ezekiel’s own determination to grow from boy to man before his time, dismissing his childhood altogether to raise Jean Dominic as if he were his own.

And he did. At only eleven years old, Ezekiel did all he tasked himself with soon after Celine and Beau died.

A failure I will never allow myself to forgive, nor the image and finality of the two coffins suspended over his parents’ waiting plots. That, and the vision of the two orphans who loomed at the edge of the hallowed earth dressed in different sizes of the same suit. Both with hair black as midnight, one with his father’s fire-laced eyes, the other’s eyes like my own. Eyes that searched his older brother’s that day as he continued to beg for the impossible.

“Can we open them?” Jean Dominic asks of the caskets.

“No,” Ezekiel replies, no longer resembling the boy with the tiny hands I gripped while he guided me around Celine’s kitchen the day before I left France—a memory that now seems a lifetime ago. Ezekiel’s eyes now dimmed, lacking the light they once held in his mother’s presence.

“I want to see Maman,” Dom whines, “why can’t we open them? Can I see Papa?”

“Dom,” Ezekiel scolds in a strict whisper, “be quiet. The preacher is speaking.”

“I just want to see them!” Dominic shrieks before crumbling into hysterical tears. Some of those gathered turn to watch the scene Jean Dominic makes, my eyes catching and holding onto the woman standing adjacent to Celine’s sons—a woman tracing their exchange carefully, eyes filled with shimmering tears and unmistakable guilt.

A woman whom I trusted with many of my secrets. The sight of her guilt-stricken face a testament to never again give all my hidden truths to one person—to allow anyone such power over me. Some of the last advice Matis left me with.

Diane stands alone at the side of the caskets as I batter her with my glare, her own eyes glued to my nephews. Refusing to let up, I bide my time, holding my accusatory glare until her shame-filled, fearful eyes finally lift to mine.

She knows.

Roman Horner’s whore knows exactly what transpired the night of that explosion. Though she denied any knowledge of what happened when I confronted her, it was her gaunt complexion, wandering eyes, and shaking hands that had been enough to convince me.

The same expression she holds now as she peers back at me. Guilt. Unmistakable guilt. For withholding the truth of what happened to the last of my family. Her return stare erases all doubt as I curse my stupidity in trusting her.

Hatred filled me in those moments as I followed Matis’s rule to trail every enemy until they’ve disappeared out of sight. In doing so, I watched Diane crumble into herself halfway down the small hill. Her shaking body and the palms covering her mouth to stifle her sobs confirming my suspicions. She didn’t know Celine and Beau well enough to grieve in such a way.

To this day, I remain haunted that I practically handed Celine and Beau to her because I believed her enough to share my knowledge about Roman’s corruption. Encouraged her often to speak to him and told her I was not alone in knowing of his true nature.

In revealing that I wasn’t the only one aware of her lover’s theft, Roman could have looked up Celine’s past, unveiled her activist history in France, and decided she and Beau were real threats.

Theiraccidentaldeaths a perfect way to silence them while sending a message to the rest of us.

It was a glimpse of her rounding belly months later—when I spotted her in passing on the street—which gave motive of why she would protect Roman so fiercely. And likely the reason she never tried again to reveal her secret to me. Her pregnancy.

I vowed that day to avenge them, to bide my time for retribution. I swore as I followed her to her battered car and watched her drive away to never again trust any outsider or to trust at all. She knew and, to this day,still knowsas I do that confiding in her may be the very reason they died.

My cross to bear, its weight dissolved into my skin and bones, into my soul, which now barely recognizes its host.

The remembrance of that day I blurred last night and the night before, as I have since their deaths. Proof of that is the drink seeping from my every pore, gliding down the sweat on my back. Proof that I’ve lived to carry that weight another day. The last lingering image forever haunting me as I stood graveside, beseeching Celine with a question I have asked myself all these years later.

“How could you leave me to raise what I despise?”

“Delphine?” Tyler prompts, his voice distant as the scrape of the fan continues to fill my ears, the throbbing in my head increasing as I turn back on my side and study Tyler.

“Are you okay?”

He’s being kind. Always so kind. Even, and especially when he helps me to bed after a long night of too many sips. Too many ‘one more’s. Never condemning me with a cross remark like Jean Dominic so often does. Which for Tyler surprises me, considering his father, too, numbs with drink.

It was through concerned whispers between Sean and Jean Dominic across the hall that I discovered this truth, which is maybe what compelled me to agree to help him.

Or maybe it was the fucking drink.