Page 137 of The Final Cut

It comes out small. Mean. Broken in the middle.

Her face folds inward before she catches it, and she raises her hands as though to reach for me before catching herself and steepling them before her face. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Behind me, the chapel door opens.

Deacon steps into the aisle with both hands visible and his body angled between me and the door, close enough to catch me if my quaking knees finally quit, far enough away that I don’t feel trapped. Not by him or the room.

His gaze moves from the woman to me, then back again.

A muscle jumps in his jaw. “Not the best timing, Marisol.”

Something cold and certain settles in me as I look between them. Deacon knew. He may not have known that she would be here tonight. But he knew enough.

I reach for one of my rubber bands and snap it.

“You knew?” I ask. “You knew, and after everything, you didn’t tell me?”

Deacon’s face tightens. “I couldn’t.”

“You mean you chose not to. You picked her, and Isabel, and…all of that bullshit…over me. That’s…fine.”

His eyes close for half a second.

That apparently stings, and I push the guilt that thought gives me down, deep down where I don’t have to deal with it. I hate that I know I hurt him. I hate that hurting him matters while the woman in front of me is breathing with my mother’s face.

But I’m not sorry for it.

She looks at Deacon. Something passes between them. Recognition. Warning. A long history I have no access to and no patience for.

Then her eyes come back to me.

“I couldn’t come,” she says.

“No, you don’t get to do that.” My voice rises. “You don’t get to stand here and tell me sorry and make excuses. You don’t get to be in his room holding his hand, saying he promised to bring me back to you. Bring me back from where? From who? From the life where I buried you?”

Deacon says my name once.I cut him a look so sharp he goes silent.

The woman grips the pew harder. “Cal saved you.”

“Yes. Cal saved me. Cal raised me. Cal sat with me after the nightmares and taught me how to check locks, and Cal made pancakes when I couldn’t eat. Cal was there.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying that.”

Her lips press together.

I am shaking now. Full body. Teeth, hands, knees, everything. The room will not stay where I put it, and I take an agitated step, and then another. My mother is alive. My mother has been alive. My mother knows Cal. My mother touched him like she loves him. My mother stood in a hospital room and said he promised to bring me back to her, as if I was some borrowed thing.

As if I was stolen.

As if the story I survived was only one version of the truth.

“Where were you?” I ask.

Her breath breaks.

Deacon moves one step closer. “Little Ghost.”