Maybe she was looking for something and noticed it was gone. I didn’t want to acknowledge the other possibility—that she’d needed it because she planned on using it.

“Tell me you know I didn’t intentionally set my father’s house on fire,” she said, pleading with me. “Tell me you know, Rem.”

Maybe it really had just been an accident. A mistake. I couldn’t decide. There were moments I thought it hadn’t been an accident, but then there were moments like this, seeing Elise begging for me to believe her.

“Not that I would’ve cried if the whole house had burned down,” she continued. “I was so miserable there, just seeing it again made me want to throw up. The worst years of my life, all wrapped up inside one shitty house.” She shook her head, not looking at me. “And maybe it’s what he deserved,” she added quietly. “Maybe he deserved to lose his home, to feel a little terrified, to wonder if he was going to die. To know how I’ve felt my whole life.”

“I’m sorry,” I said quietly, shifting closer, placing a hand on her shoulder. Maybe it was karma, all of his crimes coming back to haunt him.

“Would you really hate me, if I’d done it on purpose?” she asked, eyes ablaze. “Would you have blamed me for wanting to?”

“Elise,” I said. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“I didn’t,” she said quickly. “I’m just saying—if.”

I stared at her in stunned silence, dread growing in the pit of my stomach. What was she really saying?

“It’d be poetic justice,” she said. “Or just plain old justice.” She laughed, but it lacked warmth. Then she seemed to notice the horror on my face. “Don’t worry, Remy, I didn’t! I’m just saying I don’t regret it. And if I had the chance, I’d do it all over again.”

I pulled back. I didn’t recognize her in that moment, the cold laughter, the bitter anger on her face.

“Rem—” she began.

“No,” I said, stepping back. “Just no.” Poetic justice, that’s what she called it, and she seemed a little too gleeful at how the night had turned out.

“Remy, come on,” she said, and I shrank back. “It was just a hypothetical.” That wasn’t what it felt like. If anything, she seemed to be testing the waters, seeing how I’d react. A confession wrapped in the abstract.

“I need a moment.” I went inside, sat on the stairs, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around my legs.

Oh God, Jack was right, I thought, my heart racing. Alarmed, I pressed my forehead against my knees, just trying to shut out the world. I remembered Jack’s words from the night we met. It feels almost like I veered off course somewhere and ended up in the wrong timeline of my life. The wrong version of myself. And now I don’t know where to go.

I felt homesick, but for a home that didn’t exist anymore, one that maybe only ever existed in my imagination. I couldn’t understand where I’d veered off, where we had veered off, but we were in the wrong timeline of our lives. I was the wrong version of myself, and now I didn’t know where to go.