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I don't remember the name of the family (I wasn't with them very long), but I remember the woman I stayed with had tight curls in her brown hair. She was righteously pissed. She called me a thief, accused me of stealing from her, and then spanked me for breaking the jar. After she searched my pockets and came up empty, she told me I wasn't worth the time it took her to clean up after me and then sent me to stand in the corner.
Avery stood beside me the whole time.
Later, when we were alone, she . . . she whispered in my ear as I stood there, crying. "We are like that jar. We might have been broken," she rubbed the permanent bump under my hair that never went away after my accident. "But we have value. You do. You do."
Hearing Avery repeat those words to Doctor Bender, I knew right away what she was referring to, but it was an odd memory to evoke at that moment and it made me feel so strange.
I didn't know.
I was completely unaware of how much I was missing, and completely alone in that ignorance.
47
-Angel
My chest is bursting with snotty, uncontrolled howls. One of my hands has been un-cuffed to let me wipe my nose. My throat feels unsteady as I try to keep talking, trying to tell them.
"I wish I'd died with him. I'd be better off. But you have to believe me, I didn't know."
Tight Bun leans in. "You didn't know what?"
I want to roll my eyes into the back of my head just to see the look on the face of the guards behind me. I can't be the only one flabbergasted by this stupid, stupid question. The reason I'm here is no secret to anyone.
Even my shitty lawyer is shaking his head.
The swell in my throat threatens to choke me. I clear it as best I can. "What I know now. I didn't know then what I know now."
Tight Bun Tara clasps her hands, setting them on the table in front of her. "And what is that?" This time, her own eyes are glistening as she passes me a replacement tissue. "What have you learned?"
"Who I am."
"Who are you, Angel?"
"I'm-" fighting for a way to explain.
"You don't have to answer that." My lawyer waves his hand through the air, obstructing my view of Tara, across the table. "If it's too stressful-"
"I didn't know the signs." If he thinks he can shut me down, he's got another thing coming. "I didn't do anything-but I am at fault. For J-Jake." My heart wrenches on his name.
They have to know how the two are connected: Avery's words and the night Jake died.
I'm shaking, as if the fault line of my mind has shifted, forcing my whole body into tremors. "I can see now. None of it was-"
"Miss Patel, would you like to stop?"
I turn to glare at Mister Brandon and keep talking. "None of it should have happened. It was all wrong. He was . . . It wasn't peaceful. It wasn't real."
"What makes you think that it wasn't real?" Tara's voice is velvet soft, though she's glaring at my lawyer.
Avery is the fucking devil!
"How else-how could she take my soul like that? It's gone, and I'm still here. Still breathing."
"She's wrecked. Let's leave this for tomorrow." Quiet Darren insists and Mister Brandon jumps up in agreement.
"No!" I sob, throwing up my free hand that had been kindly uncuffed earlier to allow me to wipe my own nose.
The two men look at each other for a long moment before Quiet Darren asks, "What do you think? Should we wrap it up?"
