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But the thought that haunts me can’t be possible.
TWENTY-NINE
NIGHT FALLS, STEALING AWAY EARTH’S SUN UNTIL another day dawns. It always feels like the darkness settles too soon over this healing planet, but I’m grateful that the camp grows quiet. People return to their makeshift homes and tents. Amie falls asleep in the one loaned to us by someone with a kinder heart than mine, and I sneak out to the edge of the camp where the world is still and the air hangs like a heavy black blanket. This is where I can see the stars.
Alix appears, moving so softly through the darkness that I’m unaware of her until she’s nearly by my side. She thrusts a tattered bag into my hands.
“What is this?” I ask her, tired of her lies and secrets.
“Open it.”
“I don’t want it.” There is nothing she can give me anymore. Not answers or guidance, and certainly not hope.
“You aren’t the only one with a broken heart,” she says in a soft voice.
I don’t look at her. It
doesn’t take much to know when someone is in love, especially when that person is in love with the same man as you. It doesn’t soften my feelings toward her, though.
“Is that why you won’t tell me how he died?” I ask her. “Because you can’t share his last moments?”
Alix takes a step toward me, and when she speaks her voice is low. “Do you think that he would want you to share that? He died for Jost, so that his brother could live.”
Her eyes are heavy as she confesses this, full of a burden that I don’t quite understand.
“Then why not tell me where Jost was? Why keep it hidden?”
“I’m sorry that I was presumptuous about Jost and his wishes,” she says, skirting my question.
I stop her. “You weren’t presumptuous. You were purposeful. Deliberate. You knew what he wanted. You knew I was alive. I know that. The only thing I don’t know is why you kept the truth from me.”
Alix opens her mouth but then shuts it again, turning back toward the camp.
“Take this,” I call to her, holding out the bag.
“I have no claim to that,” Alix says. “I’ll be gone by morning. Take care of Sebrina. Jost will be strong soon.”
I should argue with her, try to stop her, but instead I let her fade into the night while I consider her words. She felt she had a claim on Jost. That’s why she kept him from me, but I’m not sure why. Except that he’s the last piece of Erik left. I consider the growing ache that only exacerbates the hollowness inside of me instead of filling it. That’s why she kept Jost from me and why she won’t tell me about Erik’s final moments.
Moments that are as much mine as they are hers. So what can she possibly give me now? What doesn’t she have a claim on? I tip the bag upside down and let its contents fall to the earth. It nestles there catching moonlight and reflecting it like a beacon, unwanted but undeniable in its potential.
A small crystal box.
THIRTY
BUILDINGS ARE BORN FROM SCRAPS AND FOUND materials. Babies are born to mothers. Earth blooms into a world of promise instead of mere potential as each of us rebuilds from what’s been left behind. I expected to find myself more alone than ever before. But there are people who fill my time with emergencies and concerns and even laughter.
I find a hodgepodge of rooms that I build into a home and I open it to my strange, collected family.
Sometimes in the crowded streets of our fledgling metro I think I spot my mother watching me. Other times whispers follow me. I don’t go out for weeks at a time after those days, but I’ve started telling my story to Amie. She listens in our cramped living room, without questions. But every now and then she gasps at a revelation, and I’m taken back to our bedroom in Romen. To two sisters whispering gossip in the dark. I leave nothing out, because she deserves to know everything.
A day will arrive when others come for this story and I am determined to remember it.
I will face that moment to protect my family—Sebrina, Jost, and Amie.
And when I’m finally ready to believe again, I will pull a relic of a former life from the high shelf in my closet. A small crystal box—a gift from Pryana, the girl who gave me everything that I took from her, and salvaged by Alix, the girl with a broken heart—that holds the very humanity of my mother.
Maybe one day I’ll seek the answers I haven’t found—from the woman who spies on me from the outskirts of life. I’m certain she has those answers, just as I am sure that she watches Amie and me when she thinks we’re not looking. But I’m not quite ready to hear that story from my mother.
