Page 86 of The Narrow

She nods. “I’ll wait upstairs,” she says, but she doesn’t retreat at first. Her breath fogs against the glass. For two seconds, three, we stand there, separated only by the door, before she reluctantly draws away.

I rush my way through the procedures and practically gallop up the stairs. I want to kiss Del the moment I get to the top, but she catches my hand instead and pulls me into the bedroom—and then my lips are on hers, and her back is against the door, her hands, urgent and greedy as they rove up my body, slide inside my shirt.

I break away before we can get too far and lean my forehead against hers instead. “Del,” I say. “God, Del.” Is that even the name I should be calling her?

“Shh. It’s all right,” she says, her fingertips on my jaw, her eyes searching mine.

“It isn’t,” I say. “None of it is.” I fall back away from her and sink onto the bed with a groan.

She settles next to me, taking my hand. Worry creases her face. “What’s wrong? What is it you needed to tell me?” she asks.

“I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I should,” I say. If I tell her, it could be deadly.

But what’s the alternative? Let her live in ignorance, unable to make her own decisions, unable to protect herself or understand what’s happening? I shudder. I can’t make that decision for her. She has the right to determine her own future.

The only thing that keeping secrets has ever brought me is pain. It’s meant I had to carve parts of myself away. Pretend to be versions of me that don’t really exist.

Del needs to be able to make that choice.

“There’s something I found out,” I say. “But, Del, your mother thinks that even knowing this stuff could trigger your condition, maybe even kill you.”

She stares at me. I can’t begin to read the storm of emotions in her eyes. Fear and confusion and curiosity and—and trust. “It’s worth the risk,” she says.

“Are you sure?”

“I can’t keep living like this. The ghost at my door. I need to know what’s happening to me, or I’m going to lose it,” Del says, and offers a fragile, false smile.

It’s her choice, I remind myself. I don’t have a right to protect her from it. I take a deep breath. “I figured out what happened the night you fell in the Narrow. How you survived.”

“How?” Del asks, hunger in her voice.

“It was Grace. She saved you somehow. She helped you escape the water, but you helped her escape too.”

Del’s hand tightens over mine. She looks at me with furious intensity, not yet comprehending. “Grace was in the water.”

“She and Maeve were there together. Caught in the Narrow—together forever, right? But when you fell in and Grace saved you, she stayed with you. Maeve was left alone. That’s why she started to show up. She was looking for Grace. And Grace was with you.”

“With me,” Del repeats.

“In you,” I say, and wait, silent.

Slowly, Del looks away. She fixes her eyes on the opposite wall. “In me,” she echoes. “As in...”

“Her ghost—or soul, or spirit, or whatever you want to call it—it’s part of you,” I say.

“I’m possessed,” Del says flatly.

“I don’t know if that’s the right word for it,” I say with a helpless shrug. “Your mother thinks it’s more like you became the same person. You’re Del. And you’re Grace. One person, just more than that, too.”

Del’s hand slips from mine. She rises from the bed and walks slowly toward the vanity. The mirror reflects back her still, solemn face. “Sometimes I look at my reflection and I don’t recognize it,” she says. “I look at my mother and it takes me a moment to remember who she is. I knew I’d changed. I felt different.Mamansaid it was because I was sick. That being sick would change anyone. I was so impatient with my old friends when they tried to talk to me. They seemed like chattering little children. That’s why I liked Aubrey so much. My mother said she was an old soul. Like me.” She gives a hollow laugh. “Does that mean I’m sixty?”

“Grace died when she was sixteen. At this point, you’re—Del is older than her,” I say. I don’t know how to talk about them separately. I don’t know how much theyareseparate. She remembers her brother, the scent of her aunt’s dahlias, as if they are her own memories. She’s never noticed being two people, so maybe that means she isn’t. She’s one person who used to be two. “You’re still breathing. That’s good.”

“I can feel it, though,” Del says. She turns back toward me, her movements precise. “Like a trickle of water down the back of my throat. I can hear it. Like a sound that isn’t yet a sound. The water rushing in.”

Her breath comes fast with a little hitch at the end, a small wetsound at the back of her throat. I rise and cross to her, putting my hand over her sternum to feel the too-quick beating of her heart.

“You’re okay,” I tell her. “You’re safe. There’s no water here. You aren’t drowning.”

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