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Are Emerson’s.
Are mine.
Her hair’s the wrong color. Once I’ve picked out the thing that’snot right,it’s a boulder-sized fist in my gut. I’ve never seen this woman before, but something comes back. My head on her shoulder. Hands on my back. Something sweet, like chocolate.
I’m going to throw up.
“You’re dead.” The words come out of my mouth like they’re someone else’s.
“Will. It’s me. I’m not dead. I’m here. I’m sorry. I—”
I hold up a hand, and it all comes back. I need to hit something. I need someone to hit me. I need to get away from her. Too many memories. Nothing to stop them from replaying.Will, if you fucking breathe wrong, you’ll never come outside again.Somebody small is wailing and won’t stop. Sinclair sayingyou can’t go out there, Em. I know. I know.Me, standing over Emerson.What’s so bad about it? Tell me. Tell me.His hands in my shirt.Everything.He meansyou.You’re what’s so bad about it.Please, just stay.
“What the fuck do you want?”
She flinches. This woman—my mother—flinches. Her eyes search my face. One hand slides out of her pocket, and she reaches for the buttons of her jacket. Her nails are done. It’s a ratty, secondhand coat that doesn’t fit her very well, and that’s box dye, but she has a manicure. Pale blue. A weird color, like she didn’t know what to choose. A dimple appears in the center of her chin, the same spot it would on mine if I ever cried, and her lower lip trembles.
“No, here’s what you’re not going to do. You’re not going to cry and expect me to comfort you. Unless you’re going to tell me that you were tied up in someone’s basement for the last twenty-eight fucking years, and I don’t think so. Your nails look too good for that.”
They’re the wrong color,Emerson’s voice whispers.Look at her face. Look.
I don’t know what her face has to do with her goddamn manicure, but I couldn’t look away if I tried. She looks like me. But she looks like Emerson even more. A vivid memory slaps itself up in my mind.
Emerson, cornered in the office at school, the woman at the desk telling him we could leave as soon as our father called about conferences. Her tone was so thick with sarcasm that I wanted to slap her.I have to go home,he’d said. It was the end of the day. He’d been stretched thin for hours, and I knew he was only getting the words.Your father seems like he’s got everything under control. I’m sure he’ll call any second now.His hands shook. He couldn’t get his gallery expression on. Sinclair got there just in time and laughed in that woman’s face.He should call you then, right? Because you’re just the person everybody wants to talk to.
It’s my mother’s face now, sadness and shock and regret with confusion underneath, but I don’t care. Emerson is the way he is because of her. Because she left. She only wanted to save Sinclair, and she didn’t do that.
She didn’t even manage to die.
One of them lied. One of themliedto me.
A tear falls onto her cheek, and she wipes at it with her fingertips. She clears her throat through what could be a sob and swallows it. “I’m sorry, Willie.”
“Don’t. Fucking.Callme that.”
“Will?”
Bristol.
She’s here. In the kitchen. In the house. With me. She’s here with me. She stayed.
“Is everything okay?”
I catch her scent first, and then her hand meets my back. Her arm wraps around my waist. She stands close, her heat warming my clothes, and looks through the door at my mother.
I feel her freeze.
She looks at my mother’s face. “But you—” I don’t know what that means. Can’t figure it out now. Bristol looks up into my face, then back at my mother. Me. My mother. “Oh my God.”
25
BRISTOL
Oh,no.
Ohshit.
I’m shocked to see the woman I bought coffee for standing on the other side of the door. Evenmoreshocked to realize that her eyes are the same color as Will’s.
