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Maybe it wasn’t even today. Time slips and slides, my grasp on it slowly waning.
“How did you get in here?” I whisper, still only half believing she’s really here and not a mirage from my tired mind and lonely imagination.
She holds up the keys in her hand.
“Mother.” She quirks a sheepish smile and tears spring to my eyes.
“Lucy,” I choke out. “It’s really you.”
I sit up while she hurries over to the bed, sitting down and taking me into her arms. Her lilac scent is so painfully familiar that I hold her even closer, terrified she’ll disappear under my touch.
My tears spill and spill, until I can barely remember a time before this. A time when I wasn’t cracking, raw, and vulnerable. I ache with the need to hold her as long as I can. She seems to feel a similar way because her embrace is as hard and long as mine.
I can’t let go. Because this moment is perfect, even if life isn’t.
Finally, her sniffles grow quiet, as do mine. We let go, pulling away to better see each other. And what a sight she is. The last time I saw her, she was eleven years old.
She’s no longer a child—the innocence gone from her eyes, my throat tightens, choking back a sob because I can only imagine the worst.
I left her here.
“I did not know you were back until I saw you this morning on stage,” she says, her voice still shaking. “If I would have known, I would have come. Please believe me, Penelope.”
I stare deeply into her eyes, my lips trembling, the words fighting to come out but also to stay in. “You don’t hate me?” I dare ask. “I killed him, Lucy.” My hand flies to my mouth. “I killed him.”
Again, I cry.
I cry so hard, I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from it.
But then, she claps her hands over my free one and squeezes it three times. Our private signal. My heart cracks open, bleeding for every second we’ve been forced apart.
“If he was anything like Frederick then I am glad he is dead,” she says with such vehemence that I’m left blinking back at her, wondering if I just hallucinated what she just said. But the resolve on her face says it all and I’m left empty.
“What did he do to you…” I manage to say through the dread.
The tears are still burning my cheeks, the guilt like acid burning my throat.
Because I know.I know.
I might have found a way to escape but she didn’t.
“I left you here,” I choke out through a sob, taking her face into my hands, desperately trying to convey everything I have left inside of me. “I’ll never forgive myself, Lucy,” my voice quivering and hoarse. “Never.”
Her eyes are wide with grief, but then she blinks and the hues of relief blend alongside it, leaning into my touch.
“You are here now, Penelope,” she says soothingly, her formal and proper choice of words reminding me of the aching distance between us now.
She smiles, and I don’t think my heart can bear it.
“I never lost hope,” she says, her voice like a balm on the wounds that won’t stop bleeding. Her lips purse, eyebrows cinching, she swallows hard as if trying to keep herself from crying. Still, her eyes glimmer with unshed tears. “I always knew you would come back for me.”
Chapter 43
TheinitialresolveIfelt while holding Lucy in my arms slowly withers. She hasn’t been back since. Whenever that was. Time is a web, and I’m caught inside of it, captive and struggling but unable to escape.
I find myself staring at the wall most of the time, whether it be with the light switched on or off. It doesn’t matter. My hands keep forgetting my hair’s gone, repeating small unconscious movements around my head and neck like I’ve done my whole life. Tucking my hair behind my ear is the most common one. My nostrils flare in irritation whenever I do it as if it’s a personal affront that my hands can’t remember my head is shaved.
The cold chill at my nape is new. The soft rustling of air that now breezes over my head when I walk or pace around the room is still so foreign, it sends chills down my arms and back whenever I feel the sensation.
