“So—you meet a girl and get married,” I said. “Start a family of your own. Make a home.”

“It doesn’t work out the way you think,” he said, a profound sadness in his voice. “You think it’s one way and it’s not.”

From underneath my mother’s bones, a faint pulse. My blood reacting. Beginning to move.

“You know what your problem is, Lydia? You try to keep everything under control,” Cole said. “You bind yourself with all sorts of rules you’ve made for yourself. But you can’t keep that up for very long. You’re too tired. You can’t keep running. Someday you’ll just—stop.”

“What happens when I stop running?”

“Well, here you are,” he said. “You’re not running. What happens?”

My blood, my bones, my muscles, they sprang to life, inflated suddenly, shaking my mother’s bones out of place, scattering those old ghosts of bones into the dim room. What happens? I felt my body filling up with something. I felt my heart pumping, regular, thrumming, warm.

I’d been quiet for so long, listening. Listening in the silent house. In the grocery store. Listening in the sound of the wind, in the sound of the waves, in the rustling of newspaper pages turning over. I was listening for it now. I listened for a sound to blossom out of the silence. His name. That name. I wanted to say it, just to feel that it was mine.

I turned toward him. I didn’t expect to feel this way, sad, sympathetic. “I know who you are,” I said.

I saw his body tensing, but it was with pleasure, with desire. He didn’t understand.

“I mean,” I said, “I know your name. I met your mother. I saw Emily.”

Chapter 30

30

The moment I said the word Emily, a change came over him. Swift and sudden. He darkened, his features changed. Something in him wanted out, and the name Emily called to it. I scrambled to my knees. Off the bed. He reached for me and grabbed a handful of my T-shirt. It ripped in his hand, but I didn’t turn around. He could keep that shred.

We dashed out of the room and down the stairs. Into the kitchen, where I stood behind the table. The smell of sautéed onions was in the air, and a pile of shredded cheese sat on a plate on the counter.