Timepiece

Chapter 30

The minibar stood open.

I could see Em and Michael in the dim light through a crack in their door, curled up in bed. I assumed the door wasn’t closed because Michael planned to stay with Em all night. Either he didn’t want her honor to fall into question, or he didn’t want to break Thomas’s rules. Boy Scout.

Lily was nowhere in sight.

Picking up a tiny bottle of Crown Royal, I ran my finger over the ridges of the glass, a perfect replica of the bigger bottle. I was a perfect replica of no one. I wanted out of my head-out of my body. Out of my life.

“Put it down.”

Lily.

“Go away, little girl. I don’t want to play right now.”

I didn’t want to hurt her, either, but I didn’t need any witnesses. Still, I was surprised when I didn’t feel any hurt. I turned around.

The sight of her made my chest ache with an unexpected want.

“I’m not playing.” She crossed the room and took the bottle out of my hand, her determined fingers unwrapping each of my tense ones. “You aren’t going to do this.”

Holding on to my wrist with one hand, she took away the liquor with the other.

“You aren’t my keeper, Lily.”

“No one is. You’re responsible for you. I’m simply reminding you that you’re worth more than what you’ll find at the bottom of a bottle.” She leaned over to put the liquor away and shut the mini-bar. Her hair fell in waves over her bare shoulder, hiding the black strap of her tank top. “Days like today could make you forget.”

“How about years like today?”

“I was worried when you took off. So were Em and Michael. I made them go to bed-promised I’d wake them up if you weren’t back by midnight.”

Gesturing toward their open door, I said, “I don’t think they really cared whether I came back at all.”

“That’s not true, Kaleb. Em insisted on staying up to apologize. That was before she cried so hard she wore herself out. She knows she was wrong and that you were trying to help her because you love her.”

I searched Lily’s face.

“You do love her?”

“Not like that.” I paused, surprised. It was true. “More like a sister. A best friend.”

“That role is already taken, but you can audition for understudy. Michael cares, too, you know.” When I shook my head, she sighed. “You need a Lily intervention. Come with me.”

When she gestured to the other empty bedroom, I almost swallowed my tongue.

“Down, boy. I meant so we could talk at a normal volume. But only if you want to talk. If you don’t, I’ll flip you for the foldout.”

“I’m not flipping you for… ugh.” I sighed. “My mama raised a gentleman, remember?”

She took my hand. “I also believe you tacked ‘in most circumstances’ onto the end of that explanation.”

In the bedroom, a book lay open facedown on a side table. Its well-worn spine was cracked, and Lily’s tiny glasses rested on top. She sat down on the double bed, and since the only chair was serving as a luggage rack, I sat down on the floor. Her back was against the headboard, and her legs were crossed at the ankles. Tiny embroidered cupcakes seemed to dance on her pajama pants. They even had sprinkles.

Due to previous experience, I should’ve been comfortable in a bedroom with a girl, but Lily looked at me as if she expected me to say something instead of do something.

“I’m sorry.” I blew out a breath. “About earlier. That you had to hear all that. I acted like a jerk.”

“All three of you acted like jerks,” she confirmed in a dry voice. “But there’s an extenuating circumstance to take into consideration. That kind of trauma can bring buried things to the surface.”

“Is that your way of telling me I’m off the hook for my behavior?” Lily didn’t deserve my sarcasm, but I dished it out, anyway.

She shrugged. “I didn’t have you on a hook. But I do have a question. Do you really feel like everything that’s happened is your fault?”

“You always get right to the point,” I said, half annoyed, half in awe. “There’s no messing around.”

“Why waste time?” She leveled her eyes at me. “And don’t turn the conversation back to me. This is about you.”

I tried to calm my own emotions enough to feel hers. Curiosity. Real, true empathy. She was trying to see things through my eyes. Nobody outside my immediate family ever did that. “I know it’s not rational, but yes. I do feel like most of what’s happened is my fault.”

Lily nodded, and then she was quiet for a few seconds, processing. “That’s the reason you offered to take the pain away for Emerson. You felt responsible. Taking emotion is part of your ability, too?”

She already knew the answer. “Em told you.”

“Technically, you did. But she clued me in, only because of what I overheard and because I asked specifically.”

“It isn’t something I do that often,” I said tightly.

“Em said that the only emotions you take from people are the painful ones.” She looked at the book on her bedside table. Grimm’s fairy tales. “I’m guessing there are consequences when you do. Magic always has a price.”

“Taking emotions isn’t magic.”

“What is it, then?” She scooted forward to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Well”-I scrambled for the right explanation-“without permission, it’s a violation.”

“But you get permission. You take pain with the intent to help, to heal. That’s the best kind of magic there is.”

“Don’t make me out to be a saint, Lily. I’m not.”

“But,” she challenged, “you aren’t like Jack.”

The comment set my teeth on edge. “I never said I was like Jack.”

“But you think you are. It’s the next logical step, especially if you compare your abilities,” she said. “Memories and emotions are all tied up. The more strongly you feel about a situation influences how you remember it. There’ve been studies.”

“That you just happened to read?”

“No. I looked it up online.” Lily pointed toward the desk, where her computer was open. There was a picture on the screen, one she’d taken today when I hadn’t been paying attention. It showed the back of Em’s head, which Lily had been in the process of cropping out, and me, with a half smile on my face.

“Nice picture.”

“Ah, yeah.” She blushed a little and rocketed over to the desk to close the lid of her laptop. “It was a good shot. You, um, have a nice smile. When you pull it out and dust it off.”

“Em and I were talking about you. How talented you are.”

“Let’s get back to talking about you.” Very single-minded, this girl. “You’ve never said it out loud, but I know you compare yourself to him.”

I debated telling her that Jack had just made all kinds of comparisons for me, and that the similarities were worse than I’d thought, but I was too worried I’d cave and tell her about the pocket watch. I didn’t want to go there tonight, so I shrugged. “Maybe.”

“It’s only your abilities that are the same.” She walked back to the bed, but she didn’t sit down. “Jack takes memories and replaces them, and it fractures people in a million ways. And your mom, what he did by taking her memories and not replacing them. It made her empty.”

I stared up at her.

“You aren’t like him,” she insisted. “Your intentions aren’t the same. What you offered to do for Emerson tonight was a step toward helping her heal. That’s what’s in your heart, and that’s the difference between you and Jack.”

“Maybe.” The word caught in my throat. How did she see the man that I wanted to be so clearly, instead of the ugliness that was really there?

“Why don’t you believe me?”

“Lily, I’ve made so many mistakes. I’ve not helped people who needed it. The people who needed it most.”

“Like who?” She sat down beside me. “Did you try to take your mom’s emotions after your dad died?”

“No,” I whispered. “Not until it was too late.”

“Listen to me.” She took a deep breath before reaching for my hand. “You have to forgive yourself for that, and then you need to take the next step. Instead of beating yourself up because Jack took your mom’s memories, you need to focus on how to get them back.”

I met her eyes.

On summer evenings when I was little, I’d hold my mom’s hand while she snapped the blooms off the bright orange flowers that grew in her garden. Every morning, they would bloom again, beautiful and resilient, ready to take on whatever the day brought.

Tiger lilies.

I had an irrational urge to hold Lily, or ask her to hold me. What would it feel like to lean instead of carrying all the time? I ran the tip of my finger over each of her knuckles before flipping her hand over to trace the lines on her palm. “I don’t know how to navigate you.”

“That’s my life line, not a map.” She smiled, but she pulled away. “Did you hear what I said about forgiving yourself?”

“I did. I think… I need… distance from this conversation.” I stood.

“I’m sorry, I had no intentions of crossing any boundaries-”

“Lily. Relax. All I meant is that I need some time to think about everything you’ve said. Not that I was mad you said it.”

“Okay.” She stood, too. “Kaleb?”

“Yeah?”

“If you… slept… in here, in that bed”-she blushed furiously as she pointed at it-“I’d feel a lot… better. About you staying out of the liquor cabinet.”

“That’s it?”

“And I’d feel a lot safer. In general.”

“Done. Let me get some clothes.” I didn’t feel right about leaving her alone, anyway, not with Jack popping in and out of every godforsaken place I went.

“Okay. Oh, and hey.”

“Yeah?” I paused at the door.

“I still don’t like you.”

“I know,” I said, smiling. “I still don’t like you, either.”

She was already asleep when I returned.

I left the door cracked.