These memories burn in me, brighter than a hundred suns, and I don’t want this. I don’t want to remember. At last, I take hold of the curtains, and with my fingers clenched, knuckles white, I yank them closed. Then I collapse to the floor, my head in my hands.

I want to crawl back into bed and not leave this room at all today, but that won’t happen. Through the closed door, I hear her. Bee, battling her own past. Down the hall, she’s having another nightmare.

When I get to her, she’s thrashing in her bed, her limbs gone wild, her face twisted.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” I keep saying, perched on the rim of the mattress. I put one hand on her arm, and instantly, I feel it there.

The thing crawling beneath her skin, thin as worms, tough as iron.

This is what Rochester did to Bee. What that attic in Thornfield Hall did.

“I barely remember it,” she always tells me. But sometimes, when she’s having a nightmare, she’ll say things that don’t make sense.

“Don’t let it get me, Edward,” she wheezes. “Please don’t do this to me.”

It was hiding in that attic where he imprisoned her. Something that got into him and got into Bee, too. That’s why neither one of them have died. The secrets of that burned-down house are keeping them alive.

There are so many things she still won’t tell me. There are things I haven’t told her, too. It’s a promise we made to each other the night we met: to not ask questions we aren’t eager to answer.

“Wake up, Bee,” I whisper, and with a final thrash, her body goes still, and she opens her eyes.

“Did it happen again?” she asks, and I nod.

She sits up, wiping salt tears from her cheeks. The skin on her arms is quiet now, no more crawling, no more movement. The thing inside her has settled down, retreating deeper into her body.

“I shouldn’t have slept in so late,” she says, as if that’s to blame.

I start to say something, to tell her it’s okay, but Bee’s too quick for me. She’s up and out of bed, rushing downstairs, determined to make up for lost time. I linger in the doorway, listening to her dashing back and forth through all the rooms, into the parlor and the hallway and settling finally in the kitchen. By the time I come down, the house is quiet and dark. She’s already tugged all the curtains closed, sealing out the worst of the sunlight. This is our compromise. The windows stay open for her, the curtains stay closed for me. We help each other. We’re only safe if we’re in this together.