Page 49 of Cherry Auction

Something in a knowing place inside me, like a puzzle piece clicking into place, says these arereal. The ghost is here. She’s in the pictures and she’s me and the hovering bits are so, so close I can taste them.

Donny and me.

I feel him. I feelme.I’m here. I’m right here, so close, tingling at the edges of my fingertips.

I stare harder at the pictures, reaching so hard for the rest of me. But all I can see is Donny. And the look on his face has me crumbling to the floor.

Donny’s looking at me like he?—

He’s looking at me like he…

Like helovesme.

He wasn’t lying. It was real. It was all real. Once, we meant something to each other.

I choke on a trapped sob.

It wasn’t all a lie to torment or control me. Hedoesknow me. In a few pictures, I’m actually looking back at him. And I’m looking at him like— like I?—

The sob breaks free from my chest.

I’m looking at himlike I love him, too.

In the pictures, we’re young and wildly in love with each other. I look happier than I could ever imagine myself being.

Donny looks so young and delirious with happiness, too, but he’s… not carefree. I see that now, the longer I look.

There are deep shadows under his eyes and stress lines on his young forehead. The darkness I know in him so well now is there then, too. Does the ghost in the pictures see it? She looks oblivious, so lost in her own happiness.

Just then, the real flesh and blood Domhnall walks into the room, entering from the side with a half glass of whisky in his hand.

“Trying to run like always, Madison?” His voice is so cold.

“You’re just trying to mind-fuck me more. These are fake!” I scream as I grab my head, even though I know it’s not true. They’re real. I don’t know how, but they’re real.

“Oh come off it, Mads,” he jeers, stepping forwards. The ice in his glass is the only sound in the room. “You’re a good actress, but you’re notthatgood.”

“If it’s not fake then how could youdothis to me?” I shout, gesturing accusingly with both hands. “You loved her.”

I wave wildly again at the largest hanging photo in the room. The two kids in it have no eyes except for each other, completely absorbed in their shared little world. “We look like we?—”

I break off and look at him in despair. I’ve been wondering where my family is ever since I woke up with no memory, and he’s been here this whole time? “Why didn’tyou come for me when I went missing? Why are youdoingthis to me!”

“Why am I doing this toyou?” He scoffs in disbelief, dropping his facade for the only time since that one moment in the dungeon when he let his forehead fall against my spine. “Are you serious?”

I feel like I’m finally seeing the real Domhnall, and maybe I can only see it in him now that I’ve seen the pictures of him younger. He’s a wounded young man, capable of great love but shutting down every ounce of feeling inside himself.

“You’re going to keep on pretending you have amnesia and don’t remember meeting me years ago in Dublin?” he shouts.

I jerk at each loud syllable but stay where I am half crouched on the floor. He’s finally telling me what I begged him to from the very beginning.

His voice softens, eyes hard but distant. “You were two years older, and so fucking sophisticated. This gorgeous blonde American, promising the world to some poor Donegal fuck. I was such a clueless feck’n mark, wasn’t I?”

He turns back to me. “Wasn’t I? When you and your cunt father—” He cuts off, jaw tensing.

“What about him? Is he still alive?” I ask desperately. Domhn obviously hates me. But is there someone out there who might love me as I am now and not just my ghost?

“You disgust me,” Domhn seethes, and when I look back at him, there’s nothing of the young man from the photos.There’s only pure hatred left. “Still only wanting to please your pedophile father.”

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