I allowed myself to close my eyes. Soon, I drifted to sleep. No nightmares, no visions of men come to haunt me or scared little boys rocking forward and back. No sickness over the things I had or had not done. Only assurances that I was good, that I did what I should have, that Lee was all right now—all those sweet words whispered into my ears.
“When I was young,” I said, “I did a horrible thing. And I’m afraid that it’s followed me here.”
I thought it might ruin everything, just speaking those words. Letting them know that I was not perfect. I was not good. They’d realize they were mistaken to have ever thought I was someone to befriend.
I wanted a kind of logic. A reason. An assurance that things worked the way they were supposed to. Creatures lived and they died and sometimes they returned in a different form. Sometimes they haunted the living, and sometimes they let us be.
I felt like a girl from a novel or a movie. I felt like a girl from a different time. And all the while I told myself, Remember this feeling. How perfect this is.