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I climb up behind her, put my hands just above hers on the ladder. “I’ve got you.”
She studies me and I wonder if she hears what I’m saying. What I’m really saying. I do have her. And I won’t let her fall. Not again. Never again.
“I know,” she says, and something shifts inside me. A pain in my chest eases.
We climb in silence, Cristina’s body just inches ahead of mine, mine cocooning hers. And it feels good that I should be here. Feels right.
These past months have been different than I expected. Emptier. Or not emptier but empty again. Empty like before the night I took Cristina. The night I forced her into my home and into my life.
I knew walking away would be hard, but I thought throwing myself into the business—into rebuilding—would be enough. Would make it bearable, at least. I missed her, though. Missed her too much. And it’s different from how I miss my brother.
Lucas is dead. He died at my hands, his blood drenching them literally and figuratively. I mourn my brother daily. I mourn what happened to us. Why we became what we became. And I still wonder if there had been a chance to save him. Save us. Wonder if I could have done more.
In a way, I think that’s one of the reasons Cristina isn’t ever far from my mind. I have a chance with her. A chance I never really had with Lucas, not born into the family we were born into.
Once we’re to the top, she ducks into the small entrance. She scoots over and I have to twist to get inside. For two kids, I can see how this space would seem big, but I feel like a giant in here. Like Gulliver.
Moonlight pours in through the window cutout. We both look around. A small child’s table rests against one wall.
“We strung a pulley system to lift things from the ground. Scott’s idea,” she says.
The table is worn, one leg broken. Two chairs sit on either side and games are stacked along the far corner in their damaged boxes.
Christmas lights still drape the crookedly cut out window. They’re plastic so I’m sure their best days are about a decade in the past.
“Snacks,” she says, opening another cardboard box. I peer inside. It’s empty but for plastic wrapping that’s been gnawed through. Probably squirrels.
“I came up here once after Mom and Scott died,” she says, crawling to the plastic toy oven that has survived these years even though I’m sure the colors were more vibrant before. She opens it and I watch her face, the anticipation turning to relief as she pulls out a little tin trinket box.
“My mom bought it at an antique market. I’d thought it was so ugly. I wanted a Barbie one.” She carries it to where I’m sitting.
“What’s in it?”
She opens the lid and smiles when she sees the gold locket inside. She lifts it out.
“I’d taken it out of her bedroom on the night Dad and I had come home without the other half of our family.”
The gold chain unravels as she palms it.
She opens it, peering at the pictures behind the ovals of glass. A family photo.
“I’d just come home from the hospital in this one,” she says. I can see her parents’ happy faces, the bundle in her mother’s arms that is Cristina, her one-year-old brother tugging at her mom’s leg. “Liam was able to get some photos off my uncle’s computer but there aren’t many.”
“May I?”
She hands it to me, and I peer closely, “You really look like her.” I hand it back. “I’m sorry you lost it all. That’s not how I wanted this to go.”
“I know.”
A blanket of darkness falls over me. Maybe it’s being here where it happened. Maybe it’s being near her. I don’t know.
“I guess it’s fitting he chose fire,” I say.
“I’m sorry, Damian. I’m sorry you lost so much. I’m sorry about Lucas. And I’m even sorry about your father.” That last part is tacked on after a moment’s pause.
She shudders as a cool breeze blows in from the window.
I extend my arm over her shoulder and pull her closer so she’s leaning against me.
“They tried to tell me my father wouldn’t have suffered. That he was probably asleep. And do you know all I could think? All I hoped? That they were wrong. That he did know what was coming for him. And that he did suffer.”
I look at her. I want her to see who I am. What I am. This is the real me. I am a monster. I warned her from day one, and if she stays, she needs to do it with both eyes wide open.
“It’s okay. What you feel is okay.”
I lean my head back and stare straight ahead, in my periphery I can see her watching me.
