Page 43 of Borden 3

“That you know everything about me. That you can take one look at me and just know when something’s wrong.”

He didn’t respond. He just watched me, and I knew what he was waiting for. He wanted me to talk. I wanted to talk, too, but I couldn’t seem to push the words out.

Minutes trickled by. The room swallowed up the time, and the silence made my ears hurt because I needed to break it.

“The man isn’t important,” I finally pushed out.

Borden’s face tightened. “Who is he?”

“It doesn’t matter.” I shook my head. “This isn’t about him, Borden. I…I’ve been in a bad place lately.”

“What’s troubling you?” he asked, but his face hadn’t softened. He was triggered. His frustration about the man growing because I wasn’t going to talk about him.

“You already know.”

“The nightmares.”

“I’m so sick of being tired.”

“What about the past are you running away from?”

“I was a garbage person.”

“Your grandmother loves you, Emma. She doesn’t think about what you were like. You were a kid.”

I barely heard my own words when I uttered, “It’s not about Granny, either.”

I felt his eyes on my back as I walked over to the dresser. I opened the drawer and removed a satin nightgown. I held it in my hands, looking down at it, but it was my past I saw. The dark shadows following me. The deep alleyways and sneakers splashing into puddles. The crash of a dumpster bin closing—

“Do you know him?” Borden questioned.

He was relentless.

He was furious.

He wouldn’t let this go.

“I knew him.”

“Who–Is–He?”

“A man from my past.”

“A man?” he repeated, tightly.

“He was older than me.”

“You were a kid?”

“A teenager–”

“So, a kid.”

I sighed. “Yeah.”

“How old was he?”

“Only three years older. An older kid at the time.” He’d seemed so much older to me at the time. A figure I had put on a pedestal and orbited around.

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