Page 65 of Keep Me

“That still isn’t fair,” I said.

“Maybe it’s not,” she said. “Recovery asks you to trust that things can be okay. It asks you to stop scanning every room for exits. That is the work. The tragedy is that sometimes things are still catastrophically wrong, and you have lowered your guard, and that feels like a betrayal.” She looked at me steadily. “It isn’t. The guard was the problem, not the lowering of it. Healthy trust means you extend faith based on available evidence. You did that. The evidence was incomplete because he chose to withhold it. It was not blindness. It is just the cruelty of a man who loved you enough to hide it.”

I thought about Henry. About how he had framed those graveyard nights for Zane, kindred and romantic, because the truth was too heavy to hand over. The same instinct. Two different men, protecting the people who loved them from knowledge they had not asked for and could not have used. Somehow, I was just the one left standing with a blindfold over my eyes.

“He was protecting me,” I said.

“Yes,” Lucy said.

“The same way Henry protected Zane.”

She looked at me, a small careful adjustment crossing her face. “Tell me about that.”

But that was a different session’s work. I shook my head, not dismissing it. Filing it for later.

“Not today,” I said. “Today I just needed to say the sentence back to you.”

“I know,” Lucy said. “And I’m glad you did. What happens now?” she asked. “Practically. The house, the lease, school. Where are you?”

“Finals are done,” I said. “We were already done before.” A pause. “I’m going to sell the house.”

Behind me, the cabinet closed differently than Zane normally closed them.

“Okay,” Lucy said. “Have you thought through what that means for you?”

“I think so.” I turned slightly, enough to see Zane in my peripheral vision. He was very still, facing the coffee maker, the mug in his hand not quite being lifted to drink.

“We should talk more about it,” Lucy said. “Not necessarily today. But soon.” She looked at me over her glasses. “You seem okay.”

“I don’t know what okay is supposed to feel like anymore,” I said. “But I’m not drowning. I’m treading the water.”

“Just remember there are people to help you out of the water,” Lucy told me. “Whenever you’re ready.”

I looked at Zane, who was watching me, but pretending not to, rearranging the already perfectly placed glass cups in the cabinet. After Lucy’s screen went dark, I sat with the laptop closed in my lap and waited. It did not take long.

“You want to sell the house,” Zane said.

“I do.” I hadn’t so much as come to this decision. It felt like it had come to me, and once it did, I agreed with it completely.

He turned around. He had the look he put on when he was trying not to be the person who said the wrong thing.

“We don’t need to,” he said. “We don’t need the money. We could keep it. Rent it, at least. Or just.” He stopped. “It’s your childhood home, Seren.”

“I know.”

“You grew up here.”

“I know.”

“And you’ve just lost your dad, and decisions made right after—”

“Zane.”

He stopped.

“I know what you’re doing,” I said. “And I appreciate it. But I have thought about this.” I set the laptop on the coffee table and looked at him properly. “I don’t need the house to keep what mattered. I’m starting to understand what I actually want to carry forward, and it isn’t rooms.” I paused. “It’s other things. This house doesn’t matter. I don’t think it was ever really my home.”

He looked at me, reading my face the way he always did. “Okay,” he said. The word he used when he was choosing to trust instead of needing to understand. “If that’s what you want.”