I want to just stand here and watch her look out through the glass at the rain. There are bars across the window, but she doesn't seem to notice them. She’s too enthralled by the water hitting the glass. I shift just enough so she can see my reflection, and she turns a smile toward me.
“Emma,” she says. “You came.”
“Of course I did. How are you feeling, Lilith?”
She nods as she unfolds herself from the seat and comes toward me. She looks so much stronger and healthier than she did when she first came here. That was less than a year ago, but it feels like so much longer. The last time I was here to visit her, she told me it felt as though an entire lifetime had passed since she’d left the house at the edge of the cornfield, and yet there were moments when she was afraid if she turned around, she would see that she was still there.
"I'm feeling good. It's getting better. I was really nervous about getting to this time of year. There are a lot of bad memories. But my therapist warned me about it and has been preparing me. There are moments that are harder than others. I think there always will be,” she says.
“There will be,” I nod as we settle down at one of the round tables in the open part of the room. “There's no point in lying to you about that. There are always going to be hard moments for you, but you'll get through them. That's what's important.”
“Thank you for coming, Emma. It's so good to see you," she says, letting her eyes trace my face as if she's trying to memorize me, just in case she doesn't see me again.
There's always at least one point in every visit when she looks at me like that. I hate seeing that look. Not because I don't want her to look at me that way, or because it makes me uncomfortable. I hate that there's still a lingering feeling inside her that I might leave and not come back. It's happened to her too many times before. But as much as I wish there was something I could tell her that would reassure her it isn't going to happen with me, I know there's nothing I could say.
Words are just that to Lilith. Words. She learned in a brutal way that words are not only unreliable but that they can be used as weapons. My telling her that I'm not going to disappear isn't enough to convince her. She has to see me again and again until, with any luck, one day she'll settle in.
Of course, there's also the voice in the back of my mind that reminds me she isn't just worried I will leave of my own accord. Not everyone who disappeared from Lilith's life walked away from her voluntarily. Others were ripped away. I know there are times when that's what in her thoughts when she looks at me that way. There's nothing I can do to ease that fear. All I can hope is that one day the hurt inside her will be soothed enough that she doesn't feel it anymore.
“Sam wanted me to tell you hello, and he hopes you're doing well,” I say.
This makes her eyes light up and a smile comes to her lips.
“He's a good man,” she says. “Hang on to him.”
“I will,” I tell her. “As tight as I possibly can.”
“You're going to be a beautiful bride, Emma. And I know your wedding is going to be just magical.”
“You'll see it,” I tell her.
She gives me a wistful smile and a slight shake of her head.
“You know that's not true,” she says. “I'm not leaving this building anytime soon. They might not have put me in a cell, but I'm still caged up. And I should be. This is exactly where I should be.”
“Lilith,” I frown, wanting to try to find words to reassure her, but I can't.
“No, listen,” she says. “I'm not being morose. This is just my reality. A reality that I only get to experience because of you. Don't think I ever forget that each day I wake up is a day I wouldn't have if you hadn’t been in the cornfield. Nobody else would have done for me what you did. I thought he loved me. Maybe in a twisted and impossible to understand way, but he loved me, nonetheless. Now I realize he would’ve just let me bleed out into that dirt. He would have been happy to see it.”
“I'm glad I was there,” I say. “Because I'm glad you're here. He didn't deserve any more than you had already sacrificed for him. He didn't deserve that to begin with. You definitely didn't deserve what he did to you.”
She still doesn't say his name. I don't know if she ever will. But the progress she's made is remarkable. Little by little, she's coming to the point at which she can talk about what she went through. I know some details, but they're fractured and scattered around. I don't know if the story will ever fall into a linear telling, but I don't really need it to. Lilith deserves to reclaim herself, and that means claiming the story of what happened as well. She can tell it however she wants to.
“I've been doing art therapy,” she tells me. “There are some things I'm still not able to talk about, but my therapist has been encouraging me to paint.”
“Do you enjoy painting?” I ask.
“I do,” she says. “It helps when I can't find the right words to say. I just paint them out and I feel better. Would you like to see some of what I've done?”
“Absolutely,” I smile.
Grinning, she gets up and goes over to an area in the corner that contains a variety of
