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Chapter 10
Then
Ma, Da, and I ate every measly meal in silence, my mother dutifully spooning porridge or potatoes or beets into my father’s mouth as his hands trembled under the table. Ma and I found work when we could at the washbasin on Gormill Road, but she was often so sick with grief that I carried most of the weight. I couldn’t be in our house very long, so it worked out as well as it could have. Memories of Larka were painted on the walls, plastered to the ceiling, blowing on the breeze through the gaps in the planks.
I often sat on the waterfront on the grass and gravel that had been scorched, now laced with frost. The black char on the mortar and stones of the seawall had faded more and more each time Idros sent a storm. The wind churned the water in the harbor, the waves crashing into the wall, washing away one of the last pieces I had of Larka. A small section of scarred bricks was all that remained.
It was the dead of winter. My cloak was hardly enough to keep the cold from my bones, but still I sat on the thin layer of ice. My fingers and toes had gone numb an hour ago, my gaze intent on the sea. Every time the wind blew, I prayed that I’d hear a whisper of her, catch the smell of her, feel her ghost. But all I ever got was the frigid, salty air and the calls of gulls.
“I’ve seen you out here a few times,” I heard a voice call from behind me, footsteps approaching. I turned and saw Elin. I hadn’t seen her since the vigil on our doorsteps, when she stood still, red faced, numb. She sat down beside me, her cloak looking worse for wear. “I always want to come talk. I just...didn’t know how.” I said nothing, still staring into the harbor, the lighthouse’s bulb ever turning.
“Well, here you are,” I said blankly.
“H-how are you doing?” she asked sincerely, and I could hear the tension, the questioning in her voice. I didn’t answer right away and I saw her turn back toward the harbor out of my peripherals.
I took a deep breath. “Everyday, every Saints damned day, I hear that explosion.” There was no emotion in my voice, in my head. Just icy, raging numbness. “I see the blood spilling from her lips and her throat. I feel the jolt of that ship hitting the seawall.” I was spitting each word through gritted teeth now, my jaw already aching. Something pushed against the inside of my ribcage, white hot pressure burning within me. I wanted to scream, to claw at my chest, to just make it stop. “If the man who had lit the Saints damned cigar had not gone up in flames that day, I would have hunted him down and set him ablaze myself.” Elin was silent next to me. “Every plan we had, everything we wanted to do, it’s all gone. Everything is gone.” She turned to me and I to her, taking in her brown eyes, as large as saucers and worn, gaunt with grief.
“Why didn’t you help her?”
Her tiny words were ice and boiling water. Frozen stone and fire. The storm in my chest crept its way up the back of my throat, pooling in my eyes as tears. “What?”
“Why didn’t you help her?” she asked again, every ounce of sympathy that had been in her voice gone.
I realized I had never once been alone with Elin. Larka had always been around. Pain flashed through my gut at the proximity of this person, my mind crumbling, the smell of smoke, and–
“She was perfect,” she whispered. “It should have been you.”
My eyes stayed on the ocean, the view growing blurry behind the tears still gathering in my eyes. And as much as I wanted to turn to Elin and beat her face in, smash her head on the ground, I couldn’t. I couldn’t blame her for the words that broke my ribs and pierced my heart.
Because it should have been me.
Elin was right. Larka was perfect. She had been full of the things that made such a dreary life beautiful — laughter and humor and enough snark to shock anyone. If she were the sun, I was the rain, gray and stormy and full of uneasiness. People only endured the rain for the sake of the sun.
“I need you to go,” I said flatly.
“It’s because I’m right.” Her words were just as flat.
“I. Need. You. To. Go,” I spat through a clenched jaw. Without another word, she gathered her cloak and rose. I kept my eyes on the harbor, the familiar feeling of being watched bouncing right off my back. Let them stare. Let them whisper. There was nothing that could be said that I didn’t already believe.
Because it should have been me.
???
“How much can you give me?” I plopped the tarnished bracelet on the counter, keeping the hood of my cloak over my head. I wasn’t sure what kind of metal it was. I just wanted it out of my possession.
“‘Gonna take more work than it’s worth. Nothin’ I can do for ye,” the shopkeeper said, his thick, burly Inkwell accent a perfect match for his haggard face.
“Please,” I said.
“This piece ‘a shit won’t be worth three silvers at market. Waste ‘a my time.” His hands were on either side of the counter, his dark eyes staring lazily down at me.
“I’ll take one silver,” I pleaded.Something.
“Out!” he barked, pointing to the door.
I gathered the chain in my hand, the cold bite of the metal burning a hole in my palm. I didn’t want to steal. Make an honest living or go hungry. That’s how we’d been raised. But priorities change when the hunger runs so deep that death is no longer a far off someday but rather a countdown of weeks, maybe days. My father was deteriorating quickly and needed his strength, my mother unable to work between her grief and caring for my father. My odd shifts at the washbasin were not enough to keep our family afloat.
I felt the crooked weight of what I’d done heavy on me. I hadn’t set out to be a thief that day, but the opportunity presented itself and I took it. An old woman had been purchasing tea at a market stand, digging through her cloth bag in search of coins when she dropped it, the contents splaying across the street. I had been walking to Larka’s spot on the waterfront when I saw it happen, bending down to help the old woman gather her belongings.
