Page 33 of I Will Break You

When I kept asking what he might have done to warrant a vigilante mob, she whisper-hissed that Clive was suicidal and dragged me upstairs, as if the mere sight of me would send him into a spiral. Now, I’m sitting in my former room, where everything I once owned has been neatly packed away in a trunk at the foot of the bed.

It’s been redecorated with white walls and a new ceiling beam to match the exterior woodwork. My old bed has been replaced by a mahogany four-poster with drapes, and all the photos she plastered over the wall to remind me of my childhood have been replaced by tasteful landscape paintings.

Mom acts like my entire existence revolves around the accident that shattered my mind. She recoils from my presence and avoids looking me full in the face. I could say she’s freaked out because I killed Mr. Lawson, but she’s cringed away from me since I can remember.

Leaning against the windowsill, I gaze out into manicured gardens, where Uncle Clive sits on a bench by the edge of the trees, staring up into my room. He looksthinner from the distance, almost scarecrow-like in a tweed jacket and brown pants that are too short for his jangly limbs. Perhaps he bought the clothes second-hand or borrowed them from Dad.

Raising a hand, I wave, but he only lifts his chin. He sees me but refuses to engage, much like the rest of the family.

Turning away from Dad’s peculiar younger brother, I head for the trunk at the foot of the four-poster, which is secured by a combination lock. I set it to my birthday, 0916, and it springs open. Inside are the photo albums Mom and Dad made me pour over when I first awoke from my coma. I leaf through the pages, finding pictures of me as a child with younger versions of my parents, along with relatives I don’t recognize, but there isn’t a single one containing Uncle Clive.

I pick up my phone and search for the name Clive Crowley and find nothing helpful. Then I add keywords like prison, arrest, vigilante, and sentencing, but it’s like he doesn’t exist.

A knock on the door has me scrambling to my feet. Mom strides in with a tray.

“What are you doing?” she asks, her gaze dropping to the screen.

“Looking up Uncle Clive online. Why can’t I find any details on his conviction? Shouldn’t there be a public record?”

“Do you expect him to have set up a social media presence from prison?” She sets the tray down on a side table and grips the four-poster bed’s footboard. “Whatever you’re thinking of doing, stop. Your uncle is already fragile and doesn’t need another person breaking his spirit.”

“What did he do?” I ask again.

She folds her arms. “If you can’t stick to my rules, you can leave.”

My throat tightens at the thought of returning to Parisii Drive, where Xero’s ghost can and absolutely will haunt me in my sleep. “Fine. I’ll stop asking about him,” I mutter. “But I need some answers about my memory.”

“What’s happened?” She tilts her head like an owl, her brows pulling together. “Are they returning?”

“I don’t know,” I lie, not wanting to tell her that everything before the age of ten is still hidden behind a blank wall.

She closes the distance between us and places both hands on my shoulders. “What do you remember?”

“Snippets.”

“Of what?” she asks, her voice hardening.

I stare into her green eyes, seeing subtle differences between them and my own. They’re slightly bloodshot and ringed with dark circles that she’s hidden with concealer. Didn’t she say something earlier about having high blood pressure? At the time, I dismissed it as an excuse, but she’s obviously stressed.

“Nothing specific,” I mutter. “Mostly images from around the house.”

Her features relax and she releases my shoulders.

“Can I show you something?” I ask.

“What?” she asks, her voice unnaturally relaxed.

I scroll to the photo app, bring out the polaroid of me as a child, and thrust it in her face. “What’s this?”

Horror flashes across her features, before they’re schooled into a mask of false composure. “Where did you get that?”

My breath quickens. She recognizes exactly what she’s looking at. “My mailbox,” I reply. “Do you recognize it?”

“Let me see.” She makes that strange head tilt again and squints, making a show of studying the image. “The resemblance is uncanny, but I… But that’s not you. You should delete it.”

I expand the image with my fingers and focus on the girl’s stomach. “What do you call this?”

“Photoshop?”

---