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“Nice picture.”
“Ah, yeah.” She blushed a little and rocketed over to the desk to close the lid of her laptop. “It was a good shot. You, um, have a nice smile. When you pull it out and dust it off.”
“Em and I were talking about you. How talented you are.”
“Let’s get back to talking about you.” Very single-minded, this girl. “You’ve never said it out loud, but I know you compare yourself to him.”
I debated telling her that Jack had just made all kinds of comparisons for me, and that the similarities were worse than I’d thought, but I was too worried I’d cave and tell her about the pocket watch. I didn’t want to go there tonight, so I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“It’s only your abilities that are the same.” She walked back to the bed, but she didn’t sit down. “Jack takes memories and replaces them, and it fractures people in a million ways. And your mom, what he did by taking her memories and not replacing them. It made her empty.”
I stared up at her.
“You aren’t like him,” she insisted. “Your intentions aren’t the same. What you offered to do for Emerson tonight was a step toward helping her heal. That’s what’s in your heart, and that’s the difference between you and Jack.”
“Maybe.” The word caught in my throat. How did she see the man that I wanted to be so clearly, instead of the ugliness that was really there?
“Why don’t you believe me?”
“Lily, I’ve made so many mistakes. I’ve not helped people who needed it. The people who needed it most.”
“Like who?” She sat down beside me. “Did you try to take your mom’s emotions after your dad died?”
“No,” I whispered. “Not until it was too late.”
“Listen to me.” She took a deep breath before reaching for my hand. “You have to forgive yourself for that, and then you need to take the next step. Instead of beating yourself up because Jack took your mom’s memories, you need to focus on how to get them back.”
I met her eyes.
On summer evenings when I was little, I’d hold my mom’s hand while she snapped the blooms off the bright orange flowers that grew in her garden. Every morning, they would bloom again, beautiful and resilient, ready to take on whatever the day brought.
Tiger lilies.
I had an irrational urge to hold Lily, or ask her to hold me. What would it feel like to lean instead of carrying all the time? I ran the tip of my finger over each of her knuckles before flipping her hand over to trace the lines on her palm. “I don’t know how to navigate you.”
“That’s my life line, not a map.” She smiled, but she pulled away. “Did you hear what I said about forgiving yourself?”
“I did. I think … I need … distance from this conversation.” I stood.
“I’m sorry, I had no intentions of crossing any boundaries—”
“Lily. Relax. All I meant is that I need some time to think about everything you’ve said. Not that I was mad you said it.”
“Okay.” She stood, too. “Kaleb?”
“Yeah?”
“If you … slept … in here, in that bed”—she blushed furiously as she pointed at it—“I’d feel a lot … better. About you staying out of the liquor cabinet.”
“That’s it?”
“And I’d feel a lot safer. In general.”
“Done. Let me get some clothes.” I didn’t feel right about leaving her alone, anyway, not with Jack popping in and out of every godforsaken place I went.
“Okay. Oh, and hey.”
“Yeah?” I paused at the door.
