Chapter 27
The apartment is dark, but that’s no surprise anymore.
Closing the door behind me, I set my backpack down by it and flip on the light.
“Mom?” I call, though I can only hear my voice echoing back at me in the quiet hallway.
“Hey Mom, umm. You missed the meeting you were supposed to have with Principal Simpson.”
She still doesn’t answer, but I’m not exactly surprised. I tread down the hallway, bypassing the kitchen, the dining room, and my father’s old den that’s been closed since he left. “Mom, I…I’m really worried about you.”
The apartment is a mess. It’s always a mess, with fast food trash and cans on the floor. Wadded-up paper towels sit like fallen leaves along the edges of the well-worn path, and I sigh as I get closer to my mom’s room at the very end of the apartment.
Her door is closed, which isn’t surprising. But the moment I bring my hand up to knock, the door suddenly opens and my mom appears, causing me to stumble.
She looks lucid for the first time in months.
That’s all I can think as my back hits the wall when I move to scramble out of her way.
Years of being hurt by her have me tensing and expecting the worst, but she only mumbles something under her breath that I don’t understand and never will.
But I trail her anyway like a lost puppy as she walks to the living room in her socks and her robe, never once noticing the trash she walks through or the fact I’m behind her.
“Mom, please…” I reach out for her, trying to grip her fingers as my heart sinks. “Please, I need you to listen to me. I-I can’t keep doing this. I’m fifteen, and—” The moment my hand finds hers, she turns on me, and like she’s done so many times before, she hits me hard in the face.
“Don’t touch me, Eleanor,” she whispers, her eyes bright with fury as I stagger back.
“Don’t you fucking touch me. Not when this is your fault.
God!” She tugs so hard on her black hair that I worry she’ll rip it out, and I make a small noise of concern in my throat as I press my fingers against my bloody lower lip.
“Mom, don’t. Please, you’re going to hurt yourself. Wait—” I follow her out onto the balcony that holds so many memories. When we were kids, my parents would start little fires on the tabletop fire pit, complete with mini campfire sticks for us to roast marshmallows on.
We’d listen to music, the kind my dad would use as an excuse to sweep my mother into his arms and dip her until she was giggling like a teenager.
Eventually, when Elaina and I would get cold, Dad would wrap us both up in a blanket and sit across from us with Mom, both of them telling us stories or answering any of our questions for that week.
It was one of our favorite rituals, and sometimes, our parents would let me and Eleanor stay up late and whisper secrets to one another on the couch, pretending they didn’t notice our giggles or our gasps.
Being out here now just makes me miss it more.
The balcony is in as much disrepair as the apartment, if not more.
The couch’s cushions are long gone, blown away in some storm after they weren’t put away properly, and the tabletop fire pit is rusted beyond repair.
But I follow my mom past those until she stands at the railing and gazes out over the city.
“What are you doing out here?” I reach a hand out to her, fingers shaking, but I don’t touch her. Not with my lip bleeding as a reminder of what she does when touched. But it doesn’t hurt. That’s the only thing that registers in my head to pull me out of this memory-turned-dream.
My mother turns and looks at me, for the first time actually seeming to truly see me. "I wish it was you instead of her,” she sighs conversationally, her eyes holding mine. The words are delivered with such calmness that it somehow makes the ensuing pain in my chest worse.
“Oh, how I wish it was you instead of her. My perfect little girl is gone, and I’m left with you instead. Why couldn’t you have been the one to get sick, Eleanor?”
I can feel myself breaking, cracks forming inside me. My hands go numb at my sides as I stare at her, hopeless.
“But, Mom, please.” I take a step forward, though in my head something screams at me not to.
Some part of me is aware this is a dream; the part that knows how this goes.
“I’m your daughter too.” Tears run down my cheeks, though in my dream I can’t feel the heat of them like I did that day.
“Please! I need you too, Mom. I miss Eleanor too, but I’m still here! ”
My mother smiles almost sadly. Like she might actually regret this as she opens her mouth and says, “God, how I wish you weren’t.” I stagger as if I’ve been physically hit, my back hitting the glass of the sliding door.
“Please don’t say that.”
“My poor Elaina.” She’s gone again, in that place between waking and dreams that she fades to in between the wine and sleep. “My poor, perfect girl. Oh, my darling.” She turns back to stare at the horizon, and I can just see her hands tighten on the railing. “I’m coming to find you, Elaina.”
There’s no fanfare. No big lead-up or warning signs. One moment my mom is standing there like she has so many times before, and then…she isn’t. It’s like I blink and between one moment and the next, my mom is just gone.
Until I hear the thud from seven stories below.
Someone screams, then someone else follows. There are voices panicking, calling the cops. Eventually, there will be sirens.
Someone will come find me, but by then, it will be too late. I’m already fracturing along the cracks in my brain, my eyes wide, staring at where my mother once stood, unable to get the words from her mouth out of my skull as they sear into my brain.
“I wish it was you instead of her.”
The world goes black around me, the dream memory fading, but the voices get louder, closer, and more insistent.
But this…isn’t how it went. There weren’t loud voices of people coming to find me. Only the eventual quiet of the horrified officers who pulled me to my feet before depositing me in the social worker’s custody, wanting to get me out of their care before I could take the same jump as my mother.
The voices become one, and it continues to get louder as the dream fades completely, pulling away the absolute darkness black with it. I shift with a soft sound, only for a hand to cup my face.
“There you are, my perfect girl. My gorgeous, troublesome little mortician.” There’s relief in Amir’s voice, even past the worry. “Come back to me. You’re all right. Show me those pretty eyes.”
On command, my eyes drift open of their own accord until I’m meeting Amir’s gaze.
“Hello there,” I whisper, dazed. “Where…” When I try to sit up, he puts a hand on my shoulder and pushes me right back down. Belatedly, I realize he’s put his jacket under my head as a pillow, and he settles down to sit beside me, his gaze on mine.
“You’re not moving yet. Not until you prove to me that you haven’t broken anything. Can you wiggle your fingers and toes for me?”
“This is dumb,” I whisper, but I do it anyway. “I’m fine, okay?” Fine, except for the memories that come flickering back to me. I fight past his hand to sit up sharply, looking around the trees. “Where…they were here and—”
Panic rises in my throat like a physical thing, and I grab Amir’s hand when he moves to touch me.
“No, no, you don’t understand. They were here.
I had to run.” It doesn’t occur to me that I sound crazy right now.
Just like I did when they put me in the hospital for the first time.
“I can’t, Amir. I can’t look at them. They’re all gone, and I can’t—”
Suddenly, he pulls me to him and crushes me against his chest. “Breathe with me,” Amir whispers in my ear. “Shhh, shhh. Just breathe with me, darling.”
In the dirt of the woods somewhere outside of Kindred Pines, Amir gently rocks me back and forth as my heart works overtime before slowing down to a more reasonable speed. My hands grip tightly at his shirt, and I burrow into him, my body trembling with both cold and terror.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so—”
He turns my head up and kisses me sweetly, dragging me back down to reality.
I whimper against his mouth and pull myself against him, still trembling.
“Why are you doing this?” I finally whisper.
“Why did you come find me?” My hands tighten.
“I can’t do this anymore, Amir. I need to know what you want—”
“You.” His voice is a hoarse snarl as he pulls away, and when I look up at him in surprise, his gaze is fever-bright. “How is that not obvious to you, my perfect girl? I want you. It’s always been you, ever since the first time I saw you.”
“I’m fucked up,” I whisper like it’s a secret. “It’s not fixable. You can’t fix me, Amir. I’m—”
“Oh, my sweet girl.” He kisses me again.
And again. Until I’m breathless and sagging in his arms. “I don’t want to fix you.
You’re perfect as you are. My perfect, sweet mortician.
” Gently, he pulls me to my feet along with him, still holding me in his arms. He only lets go to pick up his coat, which he pulls around my body to keep me warm as I tremble.
“Wait.” I stop him before he can turn, dragging him back. “Wait. Y-you say you want me. But you don’t know. You don’t understand what happened before.”
Amir searches my gaze, and whatever he sees there must convince him we aren’t going anywhere until I get this out. He nods and holds both my hands in his. “Tell me, then.”
“I had a twin. Elaina. Sh-she got sick when we were kids. She died. My parents couldn’t accept it.
My dad left, but my mom—” I take a shuddering breath, and when I close my eyes, I can feel the first tears fall hot and wet down my cheeks.
But Amir is quick to reach up to wipe them away, his hand lingering against my jaw and radiating his warmth into my skin.
“My mom said she had to stay. For me. Said that I was the reason she was stuck. But she started hating me, Amir. She blamed me for Elaina’s death.” A shuddering sob goes through me, and it’s so hard not to just curl into him right now, to hide my face in his shirt and pretend nothing else exists.
“One day I came home from school and she hit me. T-that wasn’t new. But then she walked to the balcony. She turned and looked at me. She said…”
I take a deep, shuddering breath and meet his gaze, unable to read anything in his honey-gold eyes.
“She said, ‘I wish it was you instead of her.’” The words hang between us, and Amir’s gaze darkens. Some part of me recoils, expecting him to hit me. “Then she jumped off the balcony. I couldn’t—”
Suddenly he’s pulling me against him, crushing me to his chest. “Enough,” he whispers. “That’s enough, Nell. No more of this. You’re hurting yourself. Torturing yourself and expecting me to go away. I’m not going anywhere, my darling. Never again.”
“My dad died.” I can’t help but whisper.
“That’s why I’m out here. This lawyer has been trying to call me.
” My hands tighten in his shirt and I tug him closer, as if he could somehow get any closer.
“H-he’s dead. He left me something, but didn’t even call to tell me he was dying.
” Another sob makes it past my lips, and I let out a soft, broken keen into the air.
“What did I do, Amir?” I’ve never, not once, asked that question out loud. “W-why did they do this to me? What did I do—”
Once again, I don’t get to finish. Amir kisses me. Hard. Until I’m breathless, gasping, and my knees buckle. He’s the only thing holding me up, and by the time he pulls away, I’m panting for air and staring up at him like he’s the only thing in the world that matters.
And really?
He is.
“Enough, Nell,” he tells me. “You are done hurting yourself with this. Do you hear me?” His grip on my shoulders tightens. “Enough.”
I stare at him and give a few small, jerky nods of my head. He moves, and before I can register what he’s doing, Amir helps me slide over his back so he can carry me piggyback.
“Wrap your arms around me,” he murmurs, helping me do just that. He tugs my legs around him too, and without any difficulty, strides back through the trees.
Shadows dance at the edges of my vision, until it’s too much for me to keep jumping at the thought of what they’ll become. I bury my face in his shoulder, listening to his breathing and the steady beating of his heart.
I don’t know how long he carries me. Only that, eventually, his steps stop crunching on leaves and start scuffing on asphalt.
When he stops, it’s to set me down and bundle me into the passenger seat of his Range Rover before leaning down to gently kiss my forehead.
“You’re all right, Nell,” he whispers quietly. “I’ve got you now.”
“I have to work,” I mumble, barely even aware of what’s going on around me. “The funeral—”
“I’ll let Cecil know. He’s the one who called Hestia, asking if she’d seen you. Then she called me to come find you.” Suddenly he’s in the driver’s seat beside me, time blurring in the moments he isn’t the center of my attention.
Something feels off about that, though I’m not sure what. Something about Hestia calling Amir to come find me, when she only knows we’ve been on a date or two, makes the part of my brain that still works suddenly work harder.
But with his hand on my thigh and his heated seats warming me up better than being doused with hot water, I can’t think about anything other than here, now, and him.
“Thank you,” I whisper, my eyes drifting closed so I don’t have to look at the trees or what’s standing behind them.
“You don’t need to thank me, Nell,” Amir murmurs.
“I will always be the one to come find you. No matter where you are, or if you’re simply lost in your own head.
” His hand tightens on my thigh, becoming possessive, instead of just comforting.
“You’re mine, my little mortician. Your ghosts can’t have you.
Now sleep, all right? I’ll wake you up when I get you home. ”
I want to protest. I’m not tired, and it’s barely noon, surely. But my eyes are just so heavy, and I want so badly to just…not be here right now.
So I sleep. A thankfully dreamless doze, with Amir’s hand heavy on my thigh to keep away the bad dreams and the ghosts.