bravest people I know.”
“I’m not brave,” Adele said, through hiccups. Her voice cracked.
“But you are,” said Elise. “Because I can see that you’re scared. And yet you’re still here. You haven’t asked me to take you home. Do you want to go home?”
This was far too big a question for Adele to answer. She simply clung to her mother, still sobbing.
“You want me to let you in on a little secret, darling?”
Adele’s head shifted up and down against where it pressed to her mother’s shirt and cheek, making the soft scratching sound of hair on fabric.
“I get scared sometimes too. Very scared. Do you know what I do?”
Adele shook her head.
“Would you like to know? It’s a secret, but I think I can trust you.”
Little Adele could still feel the eyes in the swimming area fixed on her. She didn’t want to be on the swimming team anymore. It seemed like a good idea when she’d signed up, but now she was having second thoughts. Her father wanted her to be in a sport. But Adele didn’t like the water. She didn’t like the smell of it, and she didn’t like the way the other children all splashed around, pushing water into her eyes and nose. It stung, and she hated it.
“What secret?” said Adele.
Her mother’s hand still stroked her hair, cool against her forehead, and Elise leaned in, kissing her. “When I’m scared, I think of you.”
At this, Adele pushed away from her mother, looking through her tear-stained eyes. She wiped at her bleary vision and wrinkled her nose in confusion. “I scare you?”
Elise laughed. “No, but I think of you when I’m scared. Because you make me brave.”
“How do I make you brave?”
Elise smiled at her daughter, affection emanating from her gaze. “Because when I think of you, I remember that there is good in the world. I remember that something makes it worthwhile. And I remember just how much I love you. Perfect love casts out fear. Something your father says. I think he heard it from a radio preacher once.” Elise chuckled. “Whatever the case, when I love you, when I think of you, I don’t feel so scared.”
Adele tilted her head to the side just a bit, still looking at her mother. “I’m still scared.”
Elise nodded. “I understand. Sometimes I can’t stop being scared either. But it doesn’t stay like this. I promise you. It doesn’t stay like this.”
The dream flitted across Adele’s mind, coming in bursts and spurts and images and memories, flooding her senses. It felt like she was actually there, like she could actually smell the chlorine in the air, like she could actually feel the hot shame against her back as the others stared at her. Like she could actually feel the warmth emanating from her mother, reaching out to meet the cold of the pool air. She remembered the day, and remembered turning back and eventually trying to get in the pool. That day, she had only managed to put a foot in the water. She hadn’t swum, and she hadn’t even gotten in completely. But in the evening, her mother had taken her out for ice cream to celebrate. By the end of the week, Adele had tested the deep end. By the end of the month, she’d swum her first lap, and by the end of high school, she had swum competitively, winning medals for her school.
Adele smiled at the memory. Perfect love casts out fear. She wondered if her mother remembered Adele the last time she’d been afraid. Had that been her final thought, before she been taken from this world?
The scene shifted. Adele’s eyes clenched, and she knew she was still sleeping, yet somehow, it felt different. She glimpsed tapping, dripping needles of scarlet. Blood, rolling down a path in the park. Grass stained with crimson, an outstretched hand reaching toward the roots of a tree on the side of the road. Fingers missing. A patchwork of scars, and deep gouging cuts all up and down her mother’s body. Naked, abandoned, tortured to death.
Bleeding, bleeding, always bleeding.
Perfect love casts out fear.
Fear, perhaps, but the banishment didn’t seem to work as well on serial killers.
And all that was left was a husk—a fleshy mass, a carved up piece of meat left in a ditch for Adele to recover.
I think of you.
Bleeding, bleeding, always bleeding.
I think of you.
***
Morning came, and with it some reprieve from the night terrors. Adele woke, glazed in sweat, finding her blankets bunched between