I break down completely, pressing my face into her hair, and I cry so hard I can't see, can't breathe, can't hear anything except the sound of my own voice saying her name over and over.
Somewhere on the other side of the room, the 911 operator voice is muffled, talking to no one.
I sob harder, my body shaking with a pain so intense it feels like my organs are being torn from my chest.
Today
Elowen
Tnk.Tnk tnk. Tnk.
The sound moves through me like electricity.
I can't breathe. I can't move. I can't do anything except sit on the arm of the couch and stare at Milo's hand as he rattles the soda can, listening to the sound I have been hearing in my sleep for three years.
Tnk. Tnk tnk. Tnk.
I look at his face.
At his eyes.
The man in the ski mask had eyes so blown out there was nothing left but black, pupils swallowed so wide they'd consumed everything. I couldn't see the color. I couldn't see anything human in them at all. Just black, enormous, and terrified.
I stare at Milo's eyes now, searching, trying to map one set of eyes onto the other, trying to find the shape of that night inside his face.
Milo is high right now.
His pupils are larger than they should be, the brown of his irises thin and ringed. I think about blown-out eyes and a ski mask, and the way that horrible man’s body moved.
Could it have been Milo?
Did he kill my parents?
Milo isn't shaking the can anymore.
He's looking at me, and the expression on his face is almost heartbroken. "You know," he whispers. "Don't you."
It isn't really a question.
My body goes cold from the inside out, a slow, spreading chill that starts in my chest and moves outward until I can feel it in my fingertips.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I say. My voice comes out steady. Three years of practice.
I stand up, then I push every ounce of fear and panic I have straight through my bond, as hard as I can, like throwing my whole weight against a door.
Cliff. Come home. Right now. Please.
Something comes back through the bond immediately, a spike of alarm and then a fierce, certain warmth that saysI'm coming. But I can't concentrate on it because Milo is standing up too. Slowly. His eyes zeroed in on my face.
"I didn't know," Milo says, his voice dropping to barely above a whisper. “I promise.” His gaze drops, looking at the floor, his hands hanging loose at his sides, and he's talking like he's been rehearsing this for a long time. "I didn't know that was your family. I swear to god, Elle. I didn't know."
I don't say anything.
"I just neededsomething." He swallows hard. "Oxy. Maybe some Benzos. That's all I wanted. I wasn't going to hurt anybody." His voice cracks slightly. "She didn’t—" Hestops and presses his mouth into a thin line. "She wouldn't stop. She kept telling me to get out, get out, get out, and I had the knife out! She could see the knife, and she just kept yelling at me like I wasn't being serious." He shakes his head, and there's something in his expression that I can only describe as genuinely baffled. "What kind of person does that? I had aknife."
My hands curl into fists at my sides.
"I was only trying to scare her," he says, finally looking up at me again. "I jerked the knife, only to show her I meant it, and I—" He stops and his face crumples. "I lost my footing. And I fell. And her husband was right there and I…"
