But the guest in the parlor is not Finn. It’s Oliver, in a neat blue suit, holding his hat in front of him, his long fingers fiddling with its brim.

“Hi,” he breathes.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

We haven’t spoken since our fight yesterday at the train station. But I should have known he’d be here today of all days.

“You remembered?”

“Of course I remembered.”

I turn to Greta, who is standing in the doorway, probably attempting to chaperone me.

“Greta, please tell Mrs. DuPre I’ll be dining out this evening.”

She looks at me disapprovingly but nods anyway.

Oliver and I don’t speak down the elevator or on Maxine’s street.

It isn’t until we’re on the banks of the river, the breeze off the water cooling the summer evening, that he speaks.

“I’m ashamed for the way I spoke to you in the train station. My father is a yeller. I vowed to never raise my voice to anyone. I hate that I broke that promise to myself, and I hate even more that you were on the other end of it,” he confesses.

It makes me a little sad that he feels it’s his duty to bend first. I know full well that I was the one in the wrong. “No, no, Oliver, I’m sorry. It was my fault.”

How do I explain this wobbly feeling in my chest, the one that has existed since I was a child, the one that tells me not to burden others with the ferocity of my emotions?

I don’t want to be a wobbly person.

I want to be a steady hand in the dark like Oliver.

“I don’t want to keep things from you.”

Oliver looks down at me, light weaving golden through his dark hair. “Then why do you?”

I swallow my fear, will myself to be brave. I’ve already told him so much, I might as well tell him this, too. “Because I am afraid if you see all of me you will decide I am too difficult to love.”

I blink and see Mrs. Vykotsky’s body in the parlor of the Commodore Club, see Oliver and his parents tied in ropes, on their knees in their fine drawing room, see Maxine and Lena unconscious on the Haxahaven lawn. Sometimes I don’t think I ever really left that night. I live it over and over again, the guilt at the destruction I caused eating away at me like termites at the foundation of a house.

I stop walking and press my fingers to Oliver’s abdomen. Just above his belly button, a little to the left, right where the bullet pierced him.

“I’ve already caused you so much pain. I wonder if there is another girl, a nice, normal girl who would give you a better life than me.”

He shakes his head. “Ahh, this is the crux of our misunderstanding.”

“Oh?”