The brush of something phantom reached for me, not touching, just there.
“Fight me if you need,” he said quietly. “Whatever you need.”
What I needed could not be given.
I needed my father to wake.
I needed Joy to be safe.
I needed answers about what was happening to her. About what would come next.
And for myself—
“Time,” I said. “I need time.”
???
When I picked up Joy from the infirmary, I was surprised she didn’t protest. It made me wonder just how drained she was, how little sleep she’d had since leaving Ehrfurt nearly eight nights ago. So I guided her up the main staircase that wound from the communal halls to the second floor, where our room waited.
Only after we’d bathed and stretched across the bed did I ask, “Do you know how you did that in the dining room today?”
She lay beside me beneath the cream plush blanket, her head on grey pillows, wearing one of the nightgowns from my wardrobe. “I don’t even know what that was.” Her voice was quiet. “I was angry at what he said, then I felt hot and suffocated, and I just needed to… I don’t know. Scream? It felt like screaming.”
I watched her while she stared up at the ceiling, hands resting on her stomach, fingers worrying at her nails. “Do you think you could do it again, if you tried?”
Her head turned toward me, eyes narrowing. “Why would I want to?”
“To learn control,” I said softly. “That’s what we’ll have to do tomorrow, to understand what this is before we speak to the judge.”
She shook her head, the motion stiff. “I have no idea how.” Her voice faltered. “I think your boyfriend’s right about it being dangerous. I might have hurt Father.”
I placed my hand over hers, stopping her restless fingers. “He’ll wake up, Joy. We just have to wait.” My chest tightened. “If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. I should have found a way to warn you both.”
I had abandoned them. They could have died in those woods because I let myself be distracted. I’d been too quick to give up trying to return to them.
She closed my hand between hers. “Don’t do that. One of us has to keep it together, and I’m the mess, remember?”
A breath of laughter escaped me. “Poor dove,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Such an outcast.”
“Are you being sarcastic?” she asked.
“Yes,” I admitted, sniffing, exhaustion blurring the edges of my vision.
“I don’t like it,” she muttered. “You sound like those people.”
“Those people you met at dinner,” I said, “they grow on you. They’ll start trusting you too.”
Her eyes widened. “So you’re alright with never going back home?”
I pressed my lips together, searching for words to explain that I didn’t miss the place she called home, that it had stopped feeling like mine.
“My home is where the people I love are,” I said instead. “Where you are, Joy.”
At that, she squeezed my hand. “I want you to come back with me, Jan. I know you’ve been here a while, and maybe you’re used to them, but they locked you here. That isn’t right.”
The words made me flinch. I thought for a moment before replying. “Do you remember two years ago, when Sera startedvisiting Pember & Quill? She came to our house for dinner so often you said she was staying too much?”
Joy frowned at the random mention of my colleague from Ehrfurt. “Yes. I said she was a bit of a snob.”
