of restoration to bring it back to the life it once had.
The bones, despite its outward despair, were exquisite.
“I love this neighborhood. In particular, this house.” I used my dress to wipe away some of the grime from a window that hadn’t been fully covered. I had rolled around in mud; my dress, stockings, and boots were not getting much worse. “Sometimes I would ask Eunice to drive home this way, just so I could see this house. I fell in love with it one December after I saw it decorated for Christmas. I had to be around seven years old. It seemed so magical, you know? It had tons of twinkling lights and the tree had been displayed in the front window. The family that lived here seemed happy.”
After a few moments had passed, I moved my attention from the house to Brando. Seconds of silence had turned into minutes. Standing next to the front door, back against the wall, he had his arms crossed over his chest, that intense gaze on me.
“What?” I whispered.
I couldn’t look at him. His stare felt too heavy, filled with emotions that I couldn’t seem to understand. But I couldn’t turn and look at the house again either.
I was locked in, not sure which way to go. Deciding on what felt the safest to me, I looked up, straight through a hole in the porch covering, watching as a bunch of clouds moved over the sickle moon. Cold stars burned against the warmth of a black velvet sky, tiny pinpricks vying for attention, close to being eclipsed by the light of the moon.
“Keep looking up…that’s the secret of life. That’s a quote to remember.”
I smiled, able to meet his eyes now. “From who?” I asked. “Someone poetic and brilliant?”
He returned the smile with a grin, the truthfulness of it lending brilliance to his passionate eyes. “Yeah, Snoopy.”
A beat passed before we both laughed. He stopped before I did.
“You seem to do that a lot.” He leaned forward and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind my ear. “Stare at the sky. You did it that night out in the snow too.”
Turning my head to the side, just as his warm hands skimmed my skin, I sighed. “I did, didn’t I?” The tremble in my voice couldn’t be hidden. I doubted that I could hide much from him. “If I remember correctly, I had been contemplating the unusualness of snow in Natchitoches.”
“Yeah, you were. We talked about it.”
I looked down at his boots, thinking. “I remember that. I often think back on that night. Sometimes I see so clearly what happened—between us. I can make out your shape in the night. Hear your voice telling me to take your jacket. I remember feeling safe, after you stayed with me.” I shrugged. “Other times, it’s harder for me to piece it all together. I can’t put a piece where it looks like it’s supposed to go because its shape is wrong. Other times an important piece seems to fit, until I look at it objectively and the entire picture is screwed up because the one piece doesn’t really belong. A puzzle is made up of so many pieces, all destined to make a complete picture. So one piece is just as important as another, you know?”
Instead of hurting through the admission, I found strength in confiding in him.
He smirked. Not in cruelty, but in a way that made me feel as though he had thought of something to share in return. “I remember every second of that night,” he said.
“I question my memories.”
“You can have mine. Down to the second I turned and left.”
Was I strong enough to hear him retell it? What if my memories were different from his? What if I made what we had bigger than it had been? My thoughts and feelings and memories were so muddled, I wasn’t sure what was true and what was lie.
I nodded, despite my reservations. “Yes, up until the point where I left with Ms. Claire. She was the woman who came out and got me. I don’t want to hear the rest.”
Brando moved to the window I had cleaned with my dress. He peered in close and then wiggled the door handle. He knocked, waited a second, and then used his shoulder to rip the wood away from the frame. After instructing me to stay put, he swept through the house. A few minutes later, he came and got me, and we entered together.
“I