Timepiece

“I think what a girl wears under her clothes is just as important as the clothes themselves. And I like a little spice underneath.” She looked directly at me as she peeled off the socks in a striptease fashion, swung them around in a circle, and threw them over her shoulder. One landed on the bookcase, the other in a corner.

“You’re trying to kill me. No, correction, you are going to kill me. And how can you make me laugh like this in the middle of all hell breaking loose?”

“It’s a gift.” Lily scooted to the middle of the bed and sat cross-legged. “I’m ready when you are.”

“I told Abi I wouldn’t let you put yourself at risk, and I meant it. Don’t act like what your grandmother wants doesn’t matter when it does.” Still, I sat down across from her.

“Looking for memories isn’t a risk. It’s my memory,” Lily argued. “If we can do this, you can figure out exactly what to look for with your parents. It should be even easier with them, because the three of you shared most of those emotions and memories.”

I sighed, and then put my hands on her hips and slid her toward me. The movement threw her off balance. She gasped and grabbed my forearms to keep from toppling over. I stared down at her fingers on my skin for a second before meeting her eyes, and then leaned forward to touch my lips to hers.

Our combined heat gathered in my chest and radiated out through my skin. She put her arms around my neck and pulled me closer.

“This isn’t why we came in here,” I whispered.

“I know,” she whispered back. “But it’s a nice side benefit.”

“Are you procrastinating? Changing your mind about letting me inside your soul?”

“No.”

“It’s intense for me when I take emotion. I know it’s not going to be easy on you to give it.” I frowned. “And it’s going to be even more intense this time, because I’ll be concentrating on the memories that go with the emotion, too. What if I do something wrong? What if I hurt you?”

“You won’t.” She touched my cheek. “I’m not afraid of anything when I’m with you.”

This time, I put my hands on her knees instead of her hips.

“Before you do anything, I think the memory you look for needs to be significant.”

“You’ve thought about this.”

She nodded.

“What do you want me to take?”

“The day I left Cuba.”

“Lily. No. What if I can’t give that back to you? And do you really want to relive it, twice more? Because if I take it and give it back, I’m pretty sure you will.”

“I want to relive it.” She bit her lip. “I’ve pushed the memory away for so long. But I think I could do with some remembering. What do I need to do?”

“I guess… focus on that day, the way you felt, anything you can remember about it. I know you were young, but even one specific detail would be good, what you were wearing, the weather, something like that.”

She took a deep breath. “It was sunny, after about a solid week of rain. My mom was always super protective of me, but this day… I was so happy to be outside, free. She was hanging clothes on the line. I stretched out on the grass for a minute, just to feel it against the backs of my legs. Everything after that gets kind of…”

“That’s enough.” I could see the day on her emotional time line. It was a big one. “Promise me you’re sure.”

“Yes.”

I leaned forward, took her face in my hands, and looked into her eyes.

Emotion flooded through my system almost the second I touched her. Visuals I didn’t understand made her feel trapped, and then there was pain. Happiness and a swing set. White clouds and flapping sheets. Worry, anxiety. Shiny black car, feet, the ground. So much fear.

Hope. Hope and a red crayon, a lined piece of paper. Crude drawings and… pain.

A doll with black yarn for hair.

Then everything clicked into sharp focus, but it all moved in slow motion.

Brake lights.

A woman who looked like Lily, but rounder, with brown eyes instead of hazel. Whispers. Love, forgiveness.

Words. I knew they were said in Spanish.

The pain of the memory was jagged around the edges, grief like broken glass, and I was dragging Lily through it, slicing open fresh wounds. I heard her sobbing, felt her cries in my chest, in my bones.

The sharp focus faded and everything began to move quickly again.

Then there was only emptiness.

I knew I was falling backward, but I couldn’t stop myself.

Blackness.

Silence.

Chapter 43

“Please, please wake up.” Lily was shaking me. I wanted to open my eyes. I tried, but all I got was a flutter. Her fear was fresh, and it was already too much for me to manage.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, scooting to the edge of the bed. “I’m going to get help.”

“No. Stay.” I tried to wrap my arms around her, but I couldn’t lift them any higher than half an inch.

“Kaleb?” She threw her body across mine and curled around me like a cat. “One second, you were fine, the next, you went pale and fell back on the headboard. You have a huge knot on the back of your head. I should call someone.”

“No.” The pain in my body was way worse than my head, and different from any I’d ever experienced. My joints ached, and I thought I could feel my blood moving through my body. Too slow. “Just… stay.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Intense. It’ll pass.” My voice was ragged, like it had been run through a thresher.

I hoped it would pass.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Calm down. You’re freaking me out.” Her emotions were everywhere, and they were making the pain worse. “I think I got a triple whammy. Your emotions, my reaction to them. Your fear now. You don’t need to be afraid; I’m fine.”

I opened my eyes. The afternoon daylight was gone, and her room was almost dark. “You’re not calming down.”

Panic. Loss. Emptiness.

She took my hands in hers. They were freezing. “I can’t remember. I know what you took, but I remember even less now. I just know it came out of my mind going backward. It was hard to make sense of it all.”

I cursed. I hadn’t prepared her for the blackness. I struggled to sit but could only manage to prop myself up on my elbows. “I’ll fix it.”

“You don’t need to fix anything right now. You can’t even sit.”

“No.” I gave up and stayed on my back. “Part of you is missing. I didn’t even think about the way it would make you feel.”

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“I hurt you. When Jack takes things, he leaves empty space. Pain. That wasn’t my intention, but that’s what you feel, right?”

She nodded and rubbed her chest with her hand, as if her heart ached.

“I’m afraid if I don’t give it back now, it’ll… I don’t know, dilute or something. I didn’t see what I took that clearly, but when I give it back, you should. I think.” I hoped. I rolled over to my side, facing her, and put my hand on her waist. “Come here.”