Page 124 of A Heart So Haunted
But I didn’t send that picture.
Fire crawled up my spine, curled around my chest cavity, hissed along my heart. I wanted to push my plate aside and smack my head into the table in embarrassment.
“Oh,” was all I managed. I knotted my hands in my lap.
Irene locked her phone and set it back on the table. She made quick work of splitting her wrap in two halves and dipping one in sauce. She took a small bite, chewed, swallowed.
I wanted to melt into the seat. I thought of all the times my phone had turned on by itself. Maybe … Maybe it hadn’t really been me. Maybe it had been someone else.
Or something else. Maybe for the same reason the doors closed, the lights turned on. The things I’d seen as a child that I didn’t remember.
“I didn’t know if you wanted to talk about it?”
I found myself shaking my head. “I must have sent that on accident. I didn’t mean …” My words fell away.
Where was this coming from? Yes, I wanted to talk about it.
Before I could talk myself off the ledge, I jumped—right into the railcar this time. Not just a step on the platform.
Thiswas the reason I’d texted her. And I needed to take the jump.
“Ivan Kenneth assaulted me while we were dating,” I whispered. “Multiple times. And I never said anything.” The words felt like arrows being ripped from my skin. From the disk in my spine, from the hinge of my jaw. Everywhere, bleeding. “He told me things I only realized later was manipulation. And I’m having a really, really hard time forgiving myself for putting up with it for so long and I thought maybe since you two dated that—”
I shook my head.
“I wondered if maybe it happened to you, too,” I breathed. And I realized then how terrible that sounded. How someone might take itas me asking, or wishing, my own ill will onto them. My skin splotched at my neck, burned, and my nails found themselves at a semi-healed scab at my wrist. I started to pick it off. “It’s wrong to assume, and I don’t want to put you on the spot or anything, and you don’t have to—”
“You’re not alone,” Irene whispered. Her syllables cracked.
“It sounds terrible, and I’m sorry, I don’t mean that I wished—”
She stood from her seat. Then I found her scooting into my side of the booth. She didn’t touch me, only existed three inches away. Her shoulder the same height as mine, her lashes curled to her browbone, wispy and beautiful. Glittering with tears.
“You’re not, Landry,” she choked.
You’re not.
My lip started to wobble. I didn’t remember leaning in—I wasn’t so sure she realized she did, either.
Her arms wrapped around my neck, mine went around her back. Her body, so slight, somehow felt like a life raft. Like she would take me to shore eventually. I didn’t know how; I just knew she would.
A sob broke my chest.
“I promise,” she whispered. “You aren’t alone. You are never,everalone.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The driveway danced with fireflies by the time I got home. I’d driven back in silence, my thoughts racing while the world around me remained quiet. So much at once.
Numb, I shifted into park and stared at the vines crowding the edge of the drive. Down to the freshly pulled landscaping, in desperate need of mulch and a new set of marigolds. It ran all the way to the shed. The door was cocked at an angle, the lock in the loop but not shut.
I stepped out of the car. My shoes hissed on cracked pavement and gravel. There was time to fix that now, too. Another thing on my never-ending list.
The list would never be finished. I could feel it. Like the house loomed over me.
Home, home, home, it whispered.
I patted my hands on both cheeks. Still warm; I’d tried to wait until the puffiness settled—Emma would demand for me to explain why I was crying, and the thought of explaining why I’d met with Irene again wasn’t something I was ready to unravel. I’d been so close to sticking my head out the window while I drove down the road to see if the cold air would calm the redness. Now, I’d just have to deal with it.
