• • •

I was trying to head off their collision but all I did was speed it up.

“What happened?” I ask her one more time. I’ve had enough. I want answers.

“Does it even matter anymore?” she says, shaking her head.

“Of course it does!” I shout.

“Nothing I say or do is going to change anything.”

“It matters,” I insist.

“No,” she says. “What matters is you and me. Everything’s going to be okay, Remy. Everything’s going to be okay now. We’re family, you and me. It’s just the two of us now, and it’ll always be just the two of us.”

Her words knock the air out of my lungs and I’m dizzy with nausea.

It’s just the two of us now.

I fold over myself, elbows propped against knees, hands cradling my head, clasped around my neck, my hair clinging to my face from fresh tears.

I am back at the Pink Mansion. Elise places a hand on my shoulder, says Everything ’s going to be okay, Remy. Everything ’s going to be okay now. What she said after had been out of reach. Jumbled, disorienting. But now I remember, her voice clear and strong, and it’s like I’m still there in the living room, kneeling over Jack’s body.

Everything ’s going to be okay, Remy. Everything ’s going to be okay now, she said. You and me, we’re family, she said. It’s just the two of us now, and it’ll always be just the two of us, she said.

It’s all flooding back and I hug my ribs tight, preparing for the blow.

“Remy!” Elise says in alarm, looking over at me. She reaches for me but I shrink away.

“Don’t touch me!” I slap her hand away. “No, no, no,” I whisper. “No.”

I remember.

Those fourteen minutes.

I remember everything.

SUNDAY // AUGUST 27 // DAY 352

63.

“It was harmless,” I told Jack over the phone on my way to Elise’s house. It was getting late, and I’d been up for almost forty hours. I was starting to swing between moments of drowsiness and adrenaline-fueled bursts of panic.

“You know it wasn’t,” he said, and I could just picture him shaking his head sadly. He’d found a small piece on the website of a local Chattanooga news station detailing a house fire caused by an unlawful use of fireworks. The fire had been put out almost immediately, with some damage to an upstairs bathroom and the roof.

“No one got hurt,” I said, which is what the news said, but even then, I could still see the roof catching on fire. I could still hear the glass breaking.

I knew it hadn’t been harmless. I knew.

“That’s not the point, you know that,” he said, sighing.

“It was an accident.” Was it? “Fireworks can be dangerous.” I knew I was just repeating myself, but there was nothing else to say. Either he believed me, or he didn’t.

Either I believed her, or I didn’t.