Page 88 of Until You Found Me

“The smoke got her long before we ever woke up. That’s what they said. Her room was right next to the kitchen…an electrical fire in the walls…we didn’t have any alarms, he broke them all.”

The wires hanging from the kitchen ceiling where the fire alarm used to be flash across her field of view and all the fight drains out of her, a thick blanket of sorrow rooting her to the ground. The fire, funeral, and the burden of guilt for not saving her child, along with the intense desire to see her again, converge in an overwhelming fog.

She remembers crying all her tears out a long time ago but now they run down her cheeks again as she curls into Logan’s chest, wishing she could forget.

Her daughter’s last name still eludes her and he doesn’t ask.

It is enough for now that she manifested a whole child right here in this room, from birth to death until it felt like they remembered Rose together.

‘You think I’m someone else?’She told him earlier, and perhaps he wasn’t wrong to wonder. She feels different now than she did before, not any more whole than she expected to be, but chipped away even further. Perhaps these new splinters will weave cracks through the rest of her until the next version of herself appears in the rubble.

Chapter 19

She remembers Rose and in some ways; it feels like Logan does, too. Tessa reached into his soul and unlocked a space he didn’t know was there, filling it with memories of someone who should have been in his life but wasn’t.

Every moment she shared painted a picture until he could swear he knew that child. It’s only wishful thinking though, muddled with what-ifs.

What if he met Tessa first?

What if Rose was his?

Would she still be here?

He and Tessa found each other, but it was too late to become a family of three. A part of him mourns that missed chance. He holds her while she sobs in his arms on the bedroom floor until dry heaving picks up where wet salt leaves off. Then he carries her to the bed, so exhausted that sleep takes her quickly even though she fights it.

“If I close my eyes, I might never see her again,” she worries, wrapping her hand around his, curled toward him on her side. “What if I forget again?”

“You won’t.”

“But what if I do?”

“Then I’ll tell you all about her. I’ll remember.”

That’s enough reassurance to allow exhaustion to take over along with a flurry of nightmares that wake them both more than once.

Tessa tells him what she sees in the wee hours of the morning. “I didn’t have dinner ready because Rose was sick. We were camping, some family trip I never wanted to go on. She threw up the whole time. The flu. He held my hand over the camping stove. Said if he went hungry again, it would be worse.”

She is groggy and sleep hazed and he wonders if she’ll remember any of this in the morning.

Two hours later she wakes again with a scream and her hands around her throat as if prying away a phantom grip. “He was watching her shower through a crack in the door. It was right before the fire. I yelled at him and then—” She scratches at her throat with a wince and cups her cheek where a hit must have landed. “What I thought about after, Logan…what I almost did to him…”

“What did you almost do?”

With a guilty frown, she averts her gaze, as if anything she could have done wouldn’t be justified. “I don’t wanna know these things. They aren’t helping, it just hurts. How do I make it stop?”

There are no good answers, of course. Pandora’s box is wide open and all they can do is deal with what breaks free as it comes. He’s out of soothing words that never helped anyway, so he folds her into his arms. Finds the dips and curves of her spine with his fingertips in gentle strokes and is relieved when her body shuts down a third time. He hopes it’ll stick until morning for a few solid hours of rest.

It doesn’t.

The final nightmare is one she keeps to herself. She pulls away when he tries to comfort her, shaking her head and refusing contact. “No, it’s not safe.”

Not safe for him is what he reads between the lines, but that doesn’t make any sort of sense and she doesn’t explain.

“Hey, how about some coffee? It’s almost sunrise. May as well get up?”

Logan’s given up on finding any rest himself. He’ll sleep later at his dialysis appointment, or pass out after in bed once he’s back home. Either way, his only job tonight is to be here for Tessa however he can. That doesn’t include sleeping while she suffers.

“Wait.” She catches his arm as he’s about to leave, tugging him back. “You know I’d never hurt you, right?”

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