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“Fine. I won’t speak to you like that again. But I need you to listen to me. I only want what’s best for you.”

“I understand, but you need to learn how to restructure your requests so that they’re softer and less demanding. And you also need to understand that sometimes I might not agree with you, or with what you think I need.”

He exhales. “Sabine, all I can think about is the possibility that something might happen to y—” He shakes his head, still unable to verbalize his feelings for me. “I can’t?—”

“Then you’re wholly missing the beautiful thing that’s happening between us right now—in this moment. Not everything is bad, Astor.”

“Life has taught me otherwise.”

“Your life isn’t done. And neither is mine, for that matter. So, Astor, let’s talk like grown-ups, okay?”

He slowly nods.

“Now ... for starters, I want to know about the little girl’s room adjacent to your bedroom. I broke in and saw everything.”

Closing his eyes, he takes a long, measured inhale. A solid minute passes before he finally speaks.

“It belonged to my daughter, Chloe. She died five years ago.”

“I’ve gathered that much—and I’m so sorry ... What happened to the room? Who marred her pictures, the walls, the bed, broke the windows, decapitated her dolls?”

“I did.”

I blink. “You destroyed her room?”

“Yes. Over the course of a few years, yes.”

“Why?”

He releases an exasperated, frustrated growl, then discards the wineglass, sloshing half of it onto the table. I’m afraid he’s about to bolt.

“Talk to me, Astor. Why did you do it?”

“Because I can’t handle it!” He explodes, the yell echoing off the walls.

The pain behind his eyes slices into my soul.

He drops his head into his hands. “I don’t know why I did it,” he says, his voice weak. “I have bad nights. I don’t sleep. I can’t. I ... think of her. Of what happened. Constantly. It haunts me. I have to release it somehow.”

I sit on the edge of the loveseat, next to him. “Tell me what happened to her.”

He picks up his wine and chugs the entire glass in one go. I take the empty glass from his hand and slide it onto the table.

“Her name was Chloe. She was the light of my life, after my mother. She went to school one day and never came home. She was found facedown in the sewer, two miles away.”

I cover my hand over my mouth.

“The police believe she fell through an open manhole in the alley next to her school. The workers were gone for the day and the area wasn’t even roped off.”

“They believe?”

“It was never confirmed. The two cameras outside the exit weren’t working. There is no photographic evidence of the fall.”

“What did the medical report say?”

“That her injuries were congruent with a fall.”

“But you don’t believe that’s what happened, do you?”

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