I paused. Let her sit in the silence.
Then I said, “Prepare me a spare room. I’ll be there tonight.”
I ended the call and threw the phone against a nearby rock. It broke as soon as it hit. Nagi hissed at the sound, agitated. I knelt beside her and ran my fingers along the glass.
Then I stood and turned toward the headstone again.
It hadn’t moved, but something in me had.
I remembered being three years old when my father smashed a bottle across my back. That was the first time before many followed. My scars never healed right, and the pain never told the full story, but my nightmares did.
I crouched near the grave and let the silence answer for him.
“Hi, Dad,” I said softly. “Hope hell is treating you well.”
As if in reply, a few fat raindrops fell from the sky. They splattered against the headstone, then against my arms. Just a few. Not enough to cool the heat. Just enough to warn me.
If that was his way of saying sorry, he could keep it.
You can’t hurt people and apologize when it’s convenient. If you’re going to be cruel, you own it. You don’t get to rewrite your story from the grave.
Bad people don’t become good just because they say they’re sorry. Good people don’t make you afraid to come home. A parent who loves their child doesn’t leave them broken.
And if they do, they don’t get to be called a parent anymore.
They’re just another problem you eventually have to cut from your life.
Because if you don’t, that poison spreads. It curls into your spine, and before you know it, you’re no different than the monsters that made you.
SIX
DORIAN
23 years old
It was just past nine when I pulled up in front of Gloomsbury Manor.
Before I got here, I stopped at a thrift shop off the highway. I picked up a worn leather jacket, a black shirt, and jeans. I even found a soft heat lamp and a cheap plastic terrarium for Nagi. I slicked my hair back, but two stubborn strands fell across my forehead no matter what I did. I let them stay. They made me look a little less like myself.
The gate creaked open without me needing to call. It was either the ghosts or the motion sensors that still worked.
The manor stood exactly as I remembered. A house on a hill, staring down at everyone passing by. The old walnut tree was still there, leaning. The swing still swayed gently even withoutwind. The barn sat where it always had, tilting slightly, empty. And beyond it, the gazebo, half-hidden in a wall of untrimmed red roses.
A lot had been buried in that garden. I always wondered why the roses still grew.
The sky cracked open. Thunder lit it above. I pulled up just in time, hopping off the bike as the rain started. I stood at the front door, water sliding down the back of my neck, my hand already hovering near the bell.
I rang once.
Waited.
No answer.
I rang twice more; each time, I could hear the echo from inside the house.
The door felt smaller than I remembered, or maybe I had just grown taller, or maybe everything else had just stayed stuck.
The door finally opened. A girl with ocean-blue eyes stood in the doorway, blinking at me like she had opened the wrong door. Her mouth parted, but no words came out. She looked familiar to me, like a girl from a dream I had forgotten and suddenly remembered all at once.
