Chapter 35 Christianna
Chapter thirty-five
Christianna
The air is crisp now. Fall has settled in.
I’ve changed since that day, and if I want to grow, I have to face my past. All of it. My therapist and Meg have been pushing this. I finally know it too. Before it felt like letting go. Now I see it for what it is. Healing, not forgetting.
I’m living out of a week-to-week hotel rental while I figure out what comes next.
Meg’s mother reached out. Told me I was welcome. She loves me in her way, but it’s a love that carries expectations. It’s confining.
Once, there was a house full of singing. Laughter spilled through the rooms. Music was everything.
Then Paw didn’t come home.
The police arrived instead. And a woman with a clipboard who spoke softly and held my hand too tightly.
They took me to a cheerful yellow house.
I told myself no one could have known what it hid. The anger. The rules. The way it punished a child for making sound. Singing was not allowed. Neither was noise. Neither was joy.
I learned to be quiet. I learned to be good.
I pushed myself and graduated early. Meg and her mother took me in. They let me breathe again. Let me play. Mrs. Geroux found me a violin tutor.
My voice never came back. But the music did.
I step into the cemetery. Rows of white and gray. I know exactly where I’m going.
Meg said I am strong. That I survived. Now I have to face the last thing holding me here.
I stop in front of the bright white marble crypt. The color of innocence housing rot. An angel carved above it. Theater masks etched beside the name.
Silas Thorne.
Standing here hurts. It has to.
I move several rows back, toward the arbor. A smaller stone. Quieter.
Angel Daye.
She would have been my world, no matter how she was conceived. I named her for her avenger.
My fingers trace the carved cherubim.
“It’s time for me to live again, my love,” I whisper. “I never wanted to without you. But hiding doesn’t honor you.”
My throat tightens.
“I was never ashamed of you. I was ashamed that I failed you.”