And then my mother is on the ground in front of me. She lies at the bottom of the stairs, her body mangled, broken. I see Dominic standing on the balcony overhead. He’s actually taking a picture of her, like she is some kind of prize.
“Grace, no!” the voice comes again.
There is a bag at my feet. I see knives and gloves and gasoline. A gun. I reach down and get it.
“Get away from her,” I tell him.
“Grace, it’s okay,” the Scarred Man says. I feel his hand on my arm but I see him at the top of the stairs. Both.
“You killed my mother!” I scream.
“Grace —” the Scarred Man starts.
I feel a push, and suddenly I’m falling, landing too hard on the ground. My head swims. My eyes blur. And breath comes harder than it should.
The smoke is growing heavier. I see the fire whipping up the stairs. The crowded shelves of my mother’s shop are igniting, item by dusty item. The dominoes are falling now, sweeping through the room.
“I can’t breathe,” I say beneath the sounds of struggling and cursing and fighting.
I close my eyes and see my mother move. I watch her sit up and look at me, her face morphing from confusion to terror. Dominic is starting down the stairs toward my mother.
“Get away from her!” I yell, struggling to my feet.
“Grace, no!” the woman screams again.
I don’t know what is real and what’s remembered, what is true and what is imagined. All I know is that air is precious and fleeting. I know the all-consuming rush as it leaves my lungs and sends me crashing to the ground, clawing for oxygen and space and sanity.
I see the gun. I can feel it in my hand.
There are cries and pleas and panic. And smoke. There is so much smoke.
“Grace, run!” the woman yells, but my mother doesn’t sound like herself.
I fire the gun once. Twice. I keep shooting until the gun won’t fire anymore.
But the man doesn’t fall because my mother is standing, running toward him until she can’t run anymore. And I’m just standing there, watching my mother fall, bloody and broken, into Dominic’s arms.
The smoke is heavier now.
I see the balcony shift, fall.
Dominic should raise his hands to protect himself, but he holds my mother’s body instead, hunched over her while the balcony crashes down upon him. His right cheek presses against the top of her head — one last embrace — as fire and debris rain down on his left.
“No.” I can feel myself backing away. “No. No. No.”
I see the prime minister stumble backward, but for a moment I don’t recognize the blurry figure who stands behind him as he falls, bloody, to the ground. I just stand there, waiting for the smoke to clear.
“Grace, are you okay?” Ms. Chancellor holds the gun at the ready in case she has to fire again, but she doesn’t.
In my head I keep hearing the shots, over and over and over. In my mind, it’s another figure on the ground. And in my heart, I know I’ve always been the one to blame.
I look at where the prime minister lies, and then I see the Scarred Man. I see him as if from a very great distance. I watch him rise like a phoenix. I see him in two places at once.
There is a man in a suit in front of me, crouching in the shadows.
And there’s a man in a brown leather jacket slowly standing in a swell of smoke. Blood rains down his face. His left eye is swollen shut. And the skin on this left cheek is almost black with blood, singed skin, and a rugged cut that runs from brow to jaw.
That is going to leave a scar.