“Grace!” she shouted.
“Huh?”
“It’s a song. Look it up… but later.” She shut the door. I pocketed the name, knowing it would tear me open—a song for another time when I had the chance and space to grieve.
Passing Rosa-May sleeping on the couch, I placed the clothes at her feet. I sucked in a sharp breath at the memory of my mother. There one second, her face determined, some fight still in her. Then gone. It hurt, but the weight of responsibility to my sister was a round, smooth thing, a warm reminder that kept me from sinking. I pictured her with Orry and it made me smile. It made me frown too. My mother should have been there to meet him. I hugged my body and returned to Joseph.
He glanced up from tucking the sheets in, lifting the mattress with one arm like it was made of cardboard. I was made of cardboard. A cut-out of myself. Everything overwhelming. Feelings clashing, crushing me flat. My body mushy with hugs, sharp with betrayal, on fire with desire, and shivering with worry.
“Who was at the door?” he asked, his beautiful eyes pulled back with distance. Too, too far away.
“Gwen.”
“Oh.”
After his parents, my parents, everything. He hadn’t said much. But then, neither had I. I gulped down my pain in one lump as I recalled telling Pelo about Mother. Hurt and reassurance as I understood that he truly loved her, and now it was too late.
Joseph ran a calloused hand over the sheets and patted them once. He moved to where I stood frozen in the doorway, caught in a memory.
“You looked tired,” he said, eyes glowing. He put his hands on my shoulders and assessed me, words trembling on the edge of his lips. “Are you all right?” His eyes darted away when his gaze reached my injured fingers. I shoved them behind my back. He wasn’t ready for those answers. The ones that came with screams, ice, beggars, and fear.
I shook my head. “I’m fine.” I wasn’t sure I’d ever be fine.
His shoulders slumped. He knew I was lying. I knew he wasn’t fine either.
“Do you still have it?” I asked, my eyes searing holes in his pockets.
A distant rumble of a laugh echoed in his chest because he knew exactly what I was asking for. He fished my handheld from his pants pocket, and I snatched it from him hungrily. My palms dipped with the weight of it, heavy with my promises. I turned so we could both see it, nestling the back of my head into his chest. He brought his hand under mine, holding the screen up closer to our faces, and when our fingers touched, my skin hummed golden songs.
The red light blinked an answer to my question. Joseph leaned down and whispered in my ear, his lips grazing my hairline.
“There he is.” He pointed to the red dot resting in one place. Goosebumps rose on my skin.
I tried to nod but I was too torn, too eager to run out of the door and into the forest, climb a mountain, whatever I needed to do to get back to Orry.
“I know he’s okay,” Joseph said, putting both of his warm hands on my shoulders and spinning me slowly to face him. I put my fingers to his chin, running over the stubble. He leaned into my hand and closed his eyes. “Just like I knew you’d survive. I never doubted it,” he whispered without looking at me. My finger ran over his lips. His posture was relaxed and guarded at the same time and I wished I could dive into his head to know what he was thinking.
JOSEPH
I couldn’t look at her. The damage to her hands, the hollowness of her eyes. Torture ran all over her face in messy lines. I knew what she wanted. I wanted it too, but I was afraid of her lips. Or I was saving them. I wasn’t sure. All I knew was those lips would undo me to the point where a confession was all I was, and I wasn’t ready.
ROSA
I wrapped my arms around his waist and put my ear to his heart, the beat unsteady.
“You know me,” I quipped. “Stubborn to the last.”
He chuckled hollowly, and I felt it was the wrong thing to say.
“Always,” he replied.
He turned off the handheld and put it away. We couldn’t do anything tonight. We rocked back and forth, holding each other, the floorboards creaking rhythmically. On the wall, a cross-stitched picture of a house with the words Home Sweet Home sewn underneath it glared at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said to his shirt.
“I’m sorry too.”
The reasons behind the apologies were too long and too numbered.
He gathered me up, my bones sagging in my skin, my energy sapped. I ate for the first time in twenty-four hours just before, and it had stretched my shrunken stomach.
“Sleep,” he ordered, laying me down on the bed and folding the sheets and blanket around me. He stroked my horrible hair from my face, his expression conflicted.
Kiss me.
My eyelids fluttered from pure exhaustion as I tracked him walking slowly around the bed. I felt a moment of peace that I held onto. He was here with me.
I was asleep before he had even crawled into the bed.
Just before dawn, I woke. My heart stuttering in my chest as the events of the last few weeks collided in my head. I closed my eyes, and my fingertips pulsed with twinges of pain. I curled them under into a light fist. The insides of my eyelids were a screen, projecting bursts of blood, instruments glinting on a tray, pins, and shiny black doors.
I drifted off to sleep after my momentary panic only to be woken minutes later. Joseph’s hulking body seized next to me, flinging my hand from his sweat-soaked side. He screamed once, low and strangled, and then his body went slack.
It reminded me that we were not a magic cure for each other. There were things I needed to tell him and words he must have for me. I was scared of those words, but I wouldn’t be able to avoid them.
ROSA
The world wants a piece of me, I know. But until I have my son in my arms, it’s like tugging on a curl of steam.
I’m insubstantial.
Ineffectual.
Three pieces out of four.
The white rays of a cold dawn piercing the thin curtains of the bedroom shed unwelcome light on our situation.
So much confusion. So much to do.
I stretched out and the cold, empty place beside me sent a shot of fear through my body. My hand wavered over the cool sheets and for a second, I thought I was back in the Superiors’ compound, but then I heard Joseph in the lounge, talking to Rosa-May. I padded out of the bedroom, but hung back, resting against the peeling hall, and listened to their conversation.
“So you don’t like toast?” Joseph squatted down with his back to me, hanging his arms over couch. Rosa-May shook her head, gazing at the floor. “What about toast with…” He got up, moving out of my sight to the kitchen cupboards. Jars clunked against each other, boxes scuffed the shelves. “I know. Toast with detergent?”
Rosa-May perched on the back of the dusty pink couch like a monkey ready to jump, her watchful eyes twinkling but her lips set in distrust. She shook her head, her mouth tugging into a very brief smile.
“No. Okay, what about toast with…” He shook a box. “Dried pasta? With drawing pins? Ouch, that’d hurt. Um… sardines?” With each ridiculous suggestion, her face relaxed a little more, her smile growing as she watched him dance around the small kitchen.