can’t. “Harry brought me cinnamon buns afterwards.”
“You’ve never told me that.”
“One day you’ll teach your daughter how to make them. And perhaps your husband will bring you cinnamon buns afterwards too.”
“But I don’t have a daughter, Grandma. I don’t want children.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” her grandmother says with a smile. “When you were a little girl you told me: you’ll have a daughter and you’ll call her Red. Remember?”
She tries to remember, to sniff out the trail of breadcrumbs that might lead her back to this unknown. A memory tugs at the edges of Scarlet’s mind: pretending to have a baby girl, stroking her soft tufts of red hair, plump cheeks, tight curled fists . . .
“If you have two daughters, perhaps you can call one of them Ruby.”
This mention of her mother ignites a guttering flame in Scarlet’s heart. She snuffs out the flame. “I’m not a little girl anymore, Grandma.”
Esme leans forward to cup Scarlet’s chin in her palm and look her granddaughter straight in the eye.
“Oh, Scarlet,” she says. “Sometimes you say the silliest things.”
And all at once Scarlet knows that no matter how much it makes sense, she cannot sell the café.
11:59 p.m.—Goldie
“I don’t know how you function,” I say.
“What do you mean?”
“You never seem to sleep.”
He shrugs. “I sleep more than I used to.”
I press my face into his chest. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re entirely human.”
“I’m not.”
I smile. “Neither am I.”
Leo kisses my forehead. “I know, it’s one of the things I love about you most of all.”
For a moment, I’m not sure I heard right. But then I’m sure I did, and I sit up so fast I almost fall back and hit my head on the headboard.
Leo smiles. “What?”
“I thought—did you just say what I think you said?”
Leo laughs, as if the declaration is as much of a surprise to him as it is to me. “Yes,” he says, still smiling. “I believe I did.”
A little less than a decade ago
Everwhere
This time it feels different. This time you’re scared.
You hesitate. You consider turning back. But you’ve waited so long that curiosity overcomes fear. Just enough to push you on, from one world and into another.
You walk the stone path, tentative at first, then faster as you start to forget the fear. What is there to fear, after all? Everything is exactly as you remember it: the misty bonfire air, the stillness, the shadows, the trees casting down a confetti of bright white leaves at your feet.
As you go deeper into the woods, falling leaves settling on your shoulders, the kinks of crooked branches at your fingertips, you find you’re no longer cold, no longer concerned about whatever it is you might have been worried about before. You hope to find that glade again, you hope to feel as you felt, you hope to hold on to that feeling longer this time.
You hear a noise behind you—the crack of a twig? the call of a bird? the scuff of a shoe on stone?—but when you turn there’s nothing to see. Your eyes have adjusted to the moonlight now and you watch the shadows as you pass, as you walk deeper and deeper into this place.
When you hear another sound, you stop. Leaves rustling. Someone is following you. You wait. And wait. But no one comes.
There it is again.
You hold your breath. But it’s not rustling, it’s whispering. Soft voices, low. You listen. The voices are not human. How do you know this? You’re not sure, but it’s as clear to you as your own name. Your name. The voices are saying your name. It’s a hook in your mouth, pulling you on. You stumble forward, towards the voices, towards the shadows. You’re a fish snagged on a line being slowly reeled in. Then the hook begins to twist. It tears into your cheek as the words darken, taunting you, mocking, saying things you never wanted to hear aloud, never wanted to believe to be true. Fear and despair surge in you, coursing through your blood, clogging your heart. You clutch your chest as it starts to constrict. You gulp, but the air is mustard gas. Your breath comes in gasps, until it doesn’t come at all. And you are falling through the mists and fog to the ground.
Goldie
My baby brother was born yesterday. My stepfather took me to the hospital with him that same afternoon, but I wasn’t excited. Truth be told, I didn’t even want to go. I would’ve made an excuse, if