In my first foster homes, the ones I was placed in before Amy and Jonathan’s, I waited to feel guilty. I waited to feel ashamed. When the feelings didn’t come, I researched what happens to people when they die in a fire, how their bodies shut down. But despite the horrible things I found, I was still relieved that Blake was dead. I was still all fury and no regret. Still trembling with how he had destroyed us.

I would hate him forever. I would think of how he burned and it would not shame me.

But what kind of monster did that make me?

“I knew he would die,” I said. “I knew he would die. I knew he would die, and I left him there because of it, and he was burned alive.”

I was naked now, shivering.

“Shhhh,” Liz said. “Sh-shhh,” she said again. “Here, climb in. I’ll help you.”

“I’m bad,” I said. “I’m dangerous. I can’t be trusted. She told me to save him but I killed him instead.”

She took my arm and led me to the tub. My whole body shook and I didn’t know if it was from the cold or the betrayal or the way I had been gutted. The way I had gutted myself. I had confessed, had said plainly what I’d done for the first time, but nothing had changed. Not even the way Liz looked at me was different. Her face was all concern and I didn’t deserve it.

She helped me to step into the hot water. My body didn’t know what to feel. I lowered myself into it. I put my face in my hands.

“I thought he was haunting me,” I said.

“Maybe he was.”

“No. It was Lee.”

“Lee?”

“He tricked me. Or I tricked him. I don’t know. I almost left him there.”

I saw it again—Lee on the rocks, throwing the shells down, his foot caught and not calling for help. He would have died. How could I have harbored any doubt? Lee had my heart.

But what had I been doing to him all this time?

I had told him too much. I had let him take care of me. I had wrapped him up in my fears, in trying to fix me, and he had almost died trying to give me what I needed.

“Lee,” I said. “Lee, I’m sorry. Lee, I’m sorry.”

“Mila,” Liz said. “Shhhh,” she said. But I kept repeating it over and over again. I tried to stop but I couldn’t.

Lee was right. I had wanted to be haunted. Had needed to be.

“I’m sorry,” I said again.