Page 124 of The Same Backward as Forward
For weeks, then months, and this time, my mother did not come to warn me away.
I visited Hannah’s grave only when I was sure no one would see me, and one day, about six months in, I found a checker nestled between the gravestone and the nearby grass, and I knew that Avery had been there, too.
One thing about our girl: Hannah unquestionably taught her how to play.
Inspired by Avery’s tribute, I left one of my own, tucked between the checker and the stone: a sheet of paper that I folded—elaborately folded—into a little cube.
Inside it, there was a single sugar packet and one last puzzle.
Time is finite.
“Your move, princess,” I tell Avery. As far as she knows, my name isHarry. I’m sure she thinks I’m years older than I am. My beard is unkempt, my voice gravelly, a side effect of speaking to no one but her. “I don’t have all day.”
One thing about Avery: She never cheats.
Another thing: She never hesitates, either.
“Not a princess.” Avery slides her knight into place. “Your move,old man.”
She’s a good girl. Damn good. “You,” I grunt, eyeing the board, “are a horrible person.”
In three moves, she has me.
One thing about Avery: She knows how to gloat. “It’s good,” she tells me, “to be queen.”
Hannah’s daughter has no inclination to runorhide. She is steady, and she is strong, and she has a mind very much like her mother’s.
She’s everything, I tell Hannah silently, the way I have so many times before. Scowling when I want to smile, I lock my eyes onto Avery’s, so very much like her mother’s. “Horrible girl,” I say.
Our girl, I think.
Avery doesn’t know what she doesn’t know, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell her, if I’ll ever stop scanning our surroundings and looking back over my shoulder and turning my face away from every phone or camera I see.
For now, keeping watch over Avery—it’s enough. But maybe someday, I will tell her our story, tell her:Once upon a time, everything was dark, and I was nothing but pain—a wall of it, a world of it.
And then… there was Hannah.
