Her eyes rest longingly on the boarded-up window as a single tear rolls down her cheek.
“You won’t even tell me that, will you?” she probes. “Whether I’m right. Whether we really are close to the shore.”
Her gaze is painfully intense when she turns back to look at me, an apathetic expression on her pretty face. She looks tired and sad, just like she did that time when I first saw her again after all those years, in her father’s flower shop.
Hopeless. Fatigued. Empty.
I never wanted to see her like that again. I fucking swore to never let this happen to her again.
“Yes, we are,” I say, and her face lights up in an instant. “You’re right, Petal. We are close to the sea, very close indeed. That’s why you can smell it even through that tiny crack at your window.”
She smiles, suggesting a nod. “Thank you. Thank you for telling me that.”
For a moment, I worry that she may pose follow-up questions that I shouldn’t answer. It was so easy to put a smile on her face; it would be hard to resist doing it again, simply by answering one of her many questions.
She’s so beautiful when her face beams up like that, even when it’s just a reserved smile like the one she’s displaying now.
I want to see more of it. I want to see her elated again, relaxed and happy for once.
And I know just what to do to achieve that.