Page 117 of What You left in Me

Mom’s hand, crack, against my cheek. A bruise blooms in that spot, already. It’ll probably leave its mark beneath the skin, a scar for all time.

Richard’s face, always so kind, folding into something I’ve never seen.

Finn’s voice, quiet and lethal:Let’s talk about what you did to my mother.

“God,” I mutter, because cursing at Sunday school names feels fair today. “That happened. That actually happened.”

I tip my head back until the steps press into the bones of my skull. Everything aches. I’m not sure pain has locations anymore, it’s just one long room I live in. My mother’s words keep looping in stereo:I did it for love. For this family. For you.Love as knife. Family as a locked trunk you throw into the lake.

And Finn… his face when he looked at her. Something in him that I pretend is not the part of me that wants to be held by it.

I can’t forgive him. But I can’t hold a grudge against him either.

I wrap both hands around the mug and tell myself tea is an anchor. The anklet under my pajama hem presses a small, firm circle into my ankle. I should hate it. I should yank it off and fling it into the lake and then dive in after it because I can’t let it go. It feels like an arm around my waist. It feels like a tether. It is a choice I keep making; it feels like the only choice I’ve got left.

My phone sits on the step beside me, face down like it’s ashamed. Penny’s texts from last night are still unread:hey, are you okay? call me.The town will know by noon that something happened. By dinner they’ll have embellished it into a myth where I grew horns and Finn sprouted wings. I will be the girlwho ruined everything or the girl who finally told the truth. Depends which pew you sit in.

The kitchen door opens. I stiffen like a deer caught in headlights.

It’s not Finn. It’s Julia, older than any of us and the only person in this house allowed to call me baby. She doesn’t work here anymore because she’s gotten too old and I have no idea where she came for. She probably heard the entire thing that happened last night. But her familiar face brings some comfort. She sets a plate of toast down next to me like an offering to a disgruntled minor deity.

“Eat,” she says. “Or at least look at it.”

“I can’t,” I say, but the toast smells like butter and past lives and I tear off a corner anyway. It chews like cardboard. She sits beside me without asking, which is how you know someone loves you.

“Men,” she says after a while, philosophical. “They argue like it means something.”

I bark out a laugh that is not an actual laugh. “It meant something last night.”

Her eyes land on the side of my face. I know exactly where. “You want ice for that?”

I touch my cheek. It’s tender, warm under my fingers. “No. I want a reset button.”

“If I find it,” she says, “I’ll use it on my knees first.” She waits, then adds, “He loves you.”

I swallow more toast than is safe. “Which he? The one who married my mother or the one who tied me to a bed?”

She gives me a look that is ninety percent amusement, ten percent scolding. “The difficult one.”

“That doesn’t narrow it down.”

“You know which one,” she says softly. “And you love him back. I could smell it on your laundry.”

My face goes nuclear. “Julia… he’s my stepbrother”

“What? You think your secrets don’t bleed?” She pats my knee. “I’m old, not blind. You aren’t related by blood.”

“Please don’t tell me you found…” I stop. I will spontaneously combust if this sentence completes itself.

She lifts both hands. “I don’t fold anything with buckles.”

“Oh my God.” I bury my face in my palms and laugh, a frantic little laugh that feels like relief wearing a bad wig. Then I’m crying, because that’s what my body has decided to do with all fluids henceforth. “I hate him today,” I say into my fingers. “And I want him, and I hate that too.”

“I know,” she says. “It’s very inconvenient.”

She stands with the small grunt of a woman whose knees deserve that reset button and squeezes my shoulder. “Eat. Then go see Richard. He needs you to stand where the room looks like it won’t collapse.”

“What about my mother?” The word tastes like ash.