For the first time, I notice that she’s carrying her laptop. She opens it and pulls up an image from Dominic’s town house. We look down at the same sparse furniture. The same dismal, empty shell of a life. For the first time, I feel sorry for the Scarred Man.
“He’s looking at a bunch of pictures,” Megan says. “I thought it was kind of strange. He doesn’t seem like the sentimental type. And when you zoom in, you can make them out. See.”
Megan works as she talks, and soon we are looking at the same images as Dominic.
“That’s my mother,” I tell them, but my gaze is frozen on the screen. I see the old storefront and quaint windows. “That’s her shop. She was an antiques dealer, but we moved too much for her to ever open her own store. Then when we got to Fort Sill … it was supposed to be my dad’s last post. We were going to make a life there. She really loved that store.”
“Isn’t that where —” Megan stops, then regains her courage. “Isn’t that where she died?”
I’m already shaking my head. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
No one speaks. The silence is worse than anything either of them can say.
“What?” I ask, my eyes darting around the room. “What?” I almost shout.
“He looked at those pictures for four hours last night,” Megan says. “He was obsessed with her. And now …”
Megan fast-forwards the recording, but Dominic barely moves. Eventually, though, the images change. I recognize the streets and the light, but it’s like looking at a stranger. I barely know the girl with the blond hair blowing all around her as she strolls down Embassy Row.
“And now he’s obsessed with you,” Megan says, studying me, expecting this to change things. She doesn’t know what I know: that the Scarred Man didn’t have that scar the night my mother died.
Nothing Megan says can change that fact.
“I didn’t see him that night.” I shake my head and push away. “I didn’t see anyone. It was an accident,” I say again very, very slowly, trying the party line on for size.
But it doesn’t quite fit, so I rock harder.
“Okay.” Noah eases closer. He places a firm, strong hand over mine. For the first time, I am still. “Then let’s —”
“You should go,” I tell them, hopefully for the last time.
“But —”
“Really.” I walk toward the door. “It’s time for you to leave.”
Megan looks like she wants to argue but she can’t find the words. Noah just looks at me — for the first time, ironically — as if I am a stranger.
“This isn’t you, Grace,” Noah tells me.
“No. This is exactly me,” I say, and push him out of my room.
“Come on!” Noah bangs on the door once I’ve closed it behind them. “At least come watch the fireworks! It’ll be fun.” When I don’t answer he bangs again. “I thought you were a fighter! I thought you were tougher than I look!”
Noah’s voice is too loud — too close. I put my hands over my ears, but that can’t keep the words out of my mind. It doesn’t silence the screaming.
“Grace, no!” my mother yells.
“Grace, stop!”
When the cry rises in my throat, I don’t try to hold it in. There is too much bile rising up within me. I grab the closest thing I can find — one of the old paperback books on my mother’s dresser. It hasn’t moved in years, and when I pick it up, it leaves a perfect outline of dust behind.
I can’t help myself. I hurl the book at the wall. It lands with a smack, pages splayed and bent. And, instantly, I hate my carelessness. My rage.
The book crashes to the floor as a photograph flutters to the ground, landing at my feet. It’s just a snapshot, really. Something taken quickly to capture a moment. Something tucked inside my mother’s favorite novel and left there for twenty years.
I look down at the image of my mother standing on the wall, her arms thrown out. The sea is blue and beautiful behind her. Her hair blows across her face, but I can tell that she is smiling, laughing. She’s my age and there is a boy holding her hand. He’s smiling and laughing, too.
Now that I know what he looked like before the scar, I recognize him instantly.
“Dominic,” I say, then I reach for another book and hurl it against the wall as well. And then another.
And another.
And another.