I was too late the moment I got into the car. I was too late when I checked my phone before leaving Jack’s house. I was too late, and no amount of time will ever make up for those crucial hours I missed.

46.

The door to the Pink Mansion was cracked open, light escaping from the house, disappearing into the dark of night.

I found her almost immediately.

“Oh my God. Elise, oh my God.” I called 9-1-1, told them to hurry.

She was lying on the steps, limp, one arm stretched up toward the second floor, a set of bloody fingerprints, the ghost of a hand clawing for freedom.

I collapsed beside her, felt sobs being ripped from my chest. Afraid I’d hurt her, make it worse, I held back, not touching her.

“Remy?” she asked, voice weak, barely audible. When she reached for me, I held her hand gently, scared I might break her. My breath caught at the sight of her, a map of blues and greens, a map of entire territories lost in battle. Her right eye was swollen almost completely shut. A river of blood ran along her collarbone, down her shoulder. Her hair was matted with blood, her neck was coated in blood from a torn earring.

“Where were you?” she said, struggling with the words, her voice hoarse and barely audible.

I needed you.

Why weren’t you there to save me?

Love is to need and to be needed. Elise needed me and I wasn’t there, it’s as simple as that.

• • •

I sat with her in the ambulance. The bright white lights bleached every surface inside the truck and cast a harsh, ghostly glow on Elise’s skin.

“I called you, but you never picked up,” she said weakly. “I called you a million times.”

I couldn’t look her in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” I said, slipping my hand in hers, a prayer in my heart for her forgiveness.

She took a deep breath and winced from the pain.

“I’m so, so sorry,” I said, and vowed to make it up to her, spend the rest of my life doing it if that’s what it took.

47.

The emergency room of Emory Lyndens Creek was almost completely empty when they rolled her in from the ambulance bay around midnight. I sat alone in the waiting room, called Dad. When he didn’t pick up after three tries, I cried and clutched my phone to my chest, scared, lost.

Finally, I called my mother. She picked up like she always did—a doctor’s habit—and fifteen minutes later, she swept into the hospital in jeans and an old T-shirt, hair tied back in a messy ponytail. Whatever her shortcomings were as a mother, she was the best at handling real emergencies.

“What happened?” she asked, no anger or recrimination in her voice.

I told her how I found Elise curled up on the stairs. I told her what I’d known about Elise’s father. I confessed my sins and asked for absolution.