Of course, that’s not what people said. The men who claimed to care for me once—my fiancé and his friends and that awful doctor back in England—wrote all about me in their journals. The “bloofer lady,” they called me. Out for blood, out for children. That was what they said to prove I was a monster deserving of a mouthful of garlic, my heart cut in two. None of it was true, those rumors they invented as though they were scribbling on a bathroom wall. But that didn’t matter. Their words are the ones everybody remembers, not mine. That’s the way it goes. The best story becomes reality, and the truth becomes an afterthought.

In the lobby, Michael’s waiting at the counter, and all at once, the past washes away as I look at him, my own private daydream.

“You know,” he says, leaning closer, “I can’t avoid you if you keep coming to me.”

My cheeks flush, and I want him a little more. “That just means you should probably run.”

But he doesn’t listen. Instead, he motions me through the back door. I already know where we’re going.

To the little shotgun house behind the drive-in.

Inside, the rooms are dark, and everything smells of mothballs and regret. He takes my hand, guiding me past a splintered dining room table, his stainless steel dog tags hanging on a rusted nail on the wall.

He glances at me, smiling. “Are you still thinking about killing me?”

“Always,” I say, and pin him in the corner. “Doesn’t that worry you?”

“No,” he whispers. “I’m just glad you came back. Before this place is gone.”

A knot tightens in my throat. “Gone?”

“Those are our last movies,” he says, nodding through the smudged picture window at the shapes on the screen. “We’re closing the place up.”

I should have expected this. Nobody ever comes here anymore. My whole world is becoming obsolete.

“Don’t look so sad,” Michael says, and his body’s warm and getting warmer, his heart throbbing fast. There are no wolves this time. No distractions. I have him all to myself. The tether between us, this thrall, goes taut, and he drops slowly to his knees. I brace for what comes next, wanting him. Pitying him a little too.

But he does something else, something I don’t expect. He puts his ear to my chest and listens to the emptiness there, the harsh silence within me.

He’s silent too, carefully working up the courage for what he says next.