Page 70 of Summer of Salt

“Areyouokay?”

“Are you going to answer every question with a question?” I said, and gently pulled her hand away.

The insides of my eyelids were a bright, painful red.

“Has the sun exploded?” I asked.

“I imagine if the sun had exploded, we wouldn’t be around to comment on it.”

“There was a bright flash.”

“Yes... ,” my mother answered, prodding for more.

“I thought that might have been what it was. The sun exploding.”

“Not quite.”

I still had my eyes squeezed shut. I tried opening them the tiniest crack. My bedroom was a blurry, bright mess through the crosshatched black lines of my eyelashes. I shut them again. My head throbbed.

“I don’t feel so great.”

“You’ve exerted a fair amount of energy. On your very first try. You’ve been asleep for a long time. It doesn’t surprise me that you don’t feel well.”

“I remember...”

“Yes?”

“He had a gun,” I said. Suddenly that was the only thing I could see: Peter holding a gun. What was Peter doing with a gun?

Peter saying the wordFernweh.

Peter meaning the wordslut.

Prue screaming.

Vira, the captain of a tugboat.

Harrison pulling flashlight after flashlight from a trench coat with impossibly deep pockets.

It came back to me in fits and starts, flashes and snapshots.

I opened my eyes again. Slowly. The light felt like an invasive, heavy thing. My mother was blurry.

I had raised my hand up toward the sky and called a bolt of lightning down from the heavens.

“Just like fucking Zeus,” I whispered.

“Ah, so you’re remembering,” Mom said.

“Holy shit. Did I kill him?”

Peter had forced himself on my sister in a gross, dusty barn, and Peter had thrown a three-hundred-year-old bird against a wooden beam and snapped her wings and neck, and Peter had aimed a gun at my face, but—despite allthat—I didn’t think I was prepared to addmurdererto the list of attributes I used to describe myself.

“Not quite,” my mother said. Her face came slowly into focus, and I saw how sad she looked, how tired.

“I think I was trying to.”

“Oh, you were certainly trying to. But luckily you have three very eager witnesses who’ve all given testimony in your favor. Plus, the gun was found. Albeit a little worn for the wear.”