“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.”
