Page 50 of Keep Me

I considered lying. The old impulse, the one where lying replaced breathing. “A little.”

“Seren.”

“I know.”

“You need to call her.” Not a suggestion. Just Austin, stating a fact like he’d state the temperature. “You have done too much work to go back to the way you used to be. It’s different now, you know? Back then… well, back then you really were alone. You’re not alone now. You have people who love you. Don’t make the choice to do everything alone.”

“I’m not alone. You’re here,” I said.

“I’m always here, you know that. But I’m not a therapist,” he said. “I’m the guy who would burn this whole town down for you, which is a different skill set and significantly less useful for whatever you’ve got going on inside that head right now.”

A small, real laugh came out of me. He watched it happen with the faintly satisfied look he always had when he managed to extract one of those from me.

“I’ll call her,” I said. “Today.”

“Today,” he repeated, locking it in the way he did.

He stayed another hour. We did not talk about Tom anymore. We talked about the warehouse, about Blair, about the summer coming, about whether Sir Reginald was an objectively stupid name for a dog. Normal things. Austin’s version of comfort was always the same: he showed up, he made you laugh at least once, and then he let life be ordinary around you until you remembered that ordinary was still available.

When he left, the house felt different than it had when he arrived. Not lighter, exactly. Just inhabited. Like something had been reminded that people still lived in it.

I called Lucy. I did not really want to. But I knew Austin was right. She answered on the second ring, which meant she had been waiting, which meant she knew. That was one thing about Lucy, she always seemed to know exactly how long to let the silence last before answered.

“Hi, Seren,” she said, and her voice was exactly what it always was, unhurried and even, the same tone whether I had been gone three days or three weeks.

“Hi,” I said.

“I heard about your father; I am so sorry for your loss. Don’t worry about the missed appointments.”

I heard her words, but I did not acknowledge them. Part of me knew, without wondering, how she knew about my dad. Zane. Always Zane.

“I found something,” I said instead.

“Tell me about it,” she said simply.

So, I told her about the vault, and the combination, and the photograph, and the two words in his handwriting on a yellow sticky note. I told it flat, the way I told everything to Lucy, inventory-voice, and she listened without interrupting, and when I finished, she was quiet for a moment in the way she was quiet when she was making space.

“What do you think he meant by it?” she asked finally. “Keep me.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it was just a label. Just, this is the thing I’m keeping.”

“Maybe,” Lucy said. “What else could it mean?”

I sat with that. Tom’s phone was off the counter now, charging in his room, its standoff with me officially concluded. The granola bar was gone.

“It could mean,” I said slowly, “that she was something worth keeping. That he saw her and decided she was worth the keeping. Not because of what she had become or what she would go through. Just.” I stopped. “Just as she was.”

“Mm,” Lucy said, which was her sound for keep going.

“I think I have spent a long time believing that the things that happened to me were proof of something. About my value. About what I attract.” I watched a car pass slowly on the street below. “But she did not know any of that yet. She was five. And he thought she was worth locking away safely.”

The silence held. “But maybe it was nothing.”

“That’s not nothing,” Lucy said.

“No,” I agreed. “It’s not.”

She didn’t push further. That was the right call, and I knew it, letting the thought sit in the air between us without dissecting it. There would be more sessions, more dissecting. For now, she just let it exist before it had time to be argued away.