Frustration wells inside her, and she flings a cushion across the room.
What were you doing? she thinks, the words directed not at herself, but her mother. What did you mean? Help me understand.
A shadow twitches at the edge of her sight. A curtain of hair, caught in a breeze. A bare foot stepping soundless on the floorboards. Her mother. Olivia doesn’t look up, afraid that if she does, the ghoul will disappear. She resists, even as the shape drifts near. Even as it sinks onto the window seat.
Olivia’s heart thuds loud inside her chest. She has learned to ignore the ghouls or banish them by glaring, but it’s never crossed her mind to call on them. Never occurred to her that they would come.
But her mother’s ghoul sits beside her now, knees curled up beneath its chin, as if summoned. It is so young, and Olivia can’t help but wonder if this is what Grace looked like when she died, or when she left, or younger still, when she first began to dream of freedom—which version of her came home to Gallant?
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the ghoul lean forward as if to study the journals, watches it run a transparent hand almost lovingly over the illustration, ink blooming beneath its fingers. Its gaze—half-there, one side of its face crumbling to shadow—flicks up to Olivia. Its mouth—what’s left of it—opens, as if trying to speak. No sound comes out. But its hand moves back and forth over the illustration.
Olivia studies the page through the veil of her mother’s skin. And then something crackles through her. She reaches for the red journal and turns the pages back to the beginning, scanning the margins for one of the sketches her mother drew. They are so delicate, so precise—and so different from the inky blooms. As if they were not even made by the same hand. Two different styles. Two different artists.
Olivia looks down at the journal she’s had all her life, and at last, she understands.
The words are her mother’s voice.
The drawings are her father’s.
If you read this, I am safe.
I lie awake and wonder why.
Why did you help me? Why do you stay in that place? Are you afraid to leave? Or are you bound to it, as I am bound, each of us prisoners in our house?
But a house like this will never be a home.
I dreamed of you last night. Isn’t that strange? I dreamed that you were standing in the garden, looking up. I dreamed that you were waiting for the sun to rise. It never came.
What do you dream of, I wonder?
Do you even dream at all?
I had a bird once. I kept it in a cage. But one day someone let it go. I was so angry, then, but now I wonder if it was me. If I rose in the night, half-asleep, and slipped the lock and set it free.
Free—a small word for such a magnificent thing.
I don’t know what it feels like, but I want to find out.
If I gave you my hand, would you take it?
If I ran, would you run with me?
Meet me here tomorrow night.
We did it. We did it.
We made it. We are free. And yet— It doesn’t feel real. I can’t believe that you are sitting next to me, that I can reach out and touch your hand, that I can speak and you will hear. I suppose there is no need to write to you this way now. Perhaps I am writing for myself. It is a habit hard to shake.
I am so happy.
I am so scared.
The two, it turns out, can walk together, hand in hand.
I can’t believe it. But the world is full of stranger things, and I am giddy with the knowing.
What a marvel it is, to feel her heart in time with mine. What a wonder to know that she is there. What will we call her?
Olivia.
Home is a choice.
Something is wrong.
I grow wide, but you grow thinner by the day. I can see you withering. I am afraid tomorrow I will see straight through you. I am afraid the next, you will be gone.
I don’t know how to make you better.
I don’t know how to make you stay.
Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me.
I would write the words a thousand times if they’d be strong enough to hold you here.
Don’t leave. Don’t leave. Please, hold on a little longer.
You cannot go before you meet her. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.
I slept in your ashes last night.
It was like you laid your shadow down before you left. It smelled like hearth smoke and winter air. I made a blanket of the empty space. I pressed my cheek against the place where yours had been.
When you came apart, I found the cursed bone. It was a molar, of all things, his mouth hiding inside yours. But don’t worry, I ground the tooth to dust and threw the filings on the fire. He will never have the piece that was you. I hope he rots while worrying the hole.