I shook my head. “She been quiet for ten years. She allowed some words.”
She looked at me over the rim of her mug. “Why did you really bring me to that Village, Jay? And don’t say it’s just for Aziza. She wasn’t even there.”
I leaned my head back on the couch, watched the fire for a second. Told the truth—half of it, anyway.
“You scared of this time of year. But you stuck here. Up on this hill. Surrounded by it whether you participate or not. I just wanted you to see there’s parts of it that don’t belong to that night. Some of it is just kids and cocoa and bad speakers. Thought if you saw it without the pressure, it might not feel so traumatic.”
She was quiet a long moment.
“That’s very sweet for somebody who threatened to kidnap me three nights ago,” she said wryly.
I chuckled. “I’m a layered man. I got range.”
She smiled, small but real. “I hate it when you’re reasonable.”
“Why?”
“Because it makes it harder to demonize you. Makes me feel… guilty.”
“For what?” I asked.
She stared into her mug. “For not telling you. For letting it get this far.”
I swallowed. My fingers tightened around my own mug.
“I’m pissed off at you. Hurt so bad. But I believe you had reasons,” I said. “I might not like them or agree with them, because you didn’t have to hide her. But I’m not stupid enough to think you did it just to be evil.”
She exhaled, a tired whoosh of breath. “I don’t know. Sometimes I feel pretty evil.”
“You not. You dramatic. You anxious. You stubborn as hell. But you not evil.”
Her throat bobbed. “That’s generous.”
“That’s accurate,” I said.
We got quiet again. The fire popped. Somewhere in the house, the old wood settled.
“You ever think about that night?” she asked suddenly.
I glanced at her. “Which one? We got a few.”
“The night we made her. Before it all went left.”
I could answer her truthfully, could tell her that I thought about it, that it fucking haunted me. That I relived it in my dreams, that I still woke up sometimes hard and angry, missing her, with the taste of her on my tongue and the feel of her on my palms.
Instead, I said, “Yeah. I think about it.”
Her eyes were on the flames, but I knew she was seeing something else. Her lip caught between her teeth the way it used to when she was nervous and wanted me to kiss her anyway.
“Sometimes I feel like that girl died. The one who believed in stuff. In us,” she whispered.
“She didn’t die. I saw her a little bit tonight. At the Village. When you were watching them lights. When you were laughing at that little boy trying to square up with Santa. She still in there.”
She turned her head then. Looked at me like she was trying to see what I saw.
“You really missed me?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
I could’ve lied. I didn’t.
