Timepiece (Hourglass 2)

A doll with black yarn for hair.

Then everything clicked into sharp focus, but it all moved in slow motion.

Brake lights.

A woman who looked like Lily, but rounder, with brown eyes instead of hazel. Whispers. Love, forgiveness.

Words. I knew they were said in Spanish.

The pain of the memory was jagged around the edges, grief like broken glass, and I was dragging Lily through it, slicing open fresh wounds. I heard her sobbing, felt her cries in my chest, in my bones.

The sharp focus faded and everything began to move quickly again.

Then there was only emptiness.

I knew I was falling backward, but I couldn’t stop myself.

Blackness.

Silence.

Chapter 43

“Please, please wake up.” Lily was shaking me. I wanted to open my eyes. I tried, but all I got was a flutter. Her fear was fresh, and it was already too much for me to manage.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, scooting to the edge of the bed. “I’m going to get help.”

“No. Stay.” I tried to wrap my arms around her, but I couldn’t lift them any higher than half an inch.

“Kaleb?” She threw her body across mine and curled around me like a cat. “One second, you were fine, the next, you went pale and fell back on the headboard. You have a huge knot on the back of your head. I should call someone.”

“No.” The pain in my body was way worse than my head, and different from any I’d ever experienced. My joints ached, and I thought I could feel my blood moving through my body. Too slow. “Just … stay.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Intense. It’ll pass.” My voice was ragged, like it had been run through a thresher.

I hoped it would pass.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Calm down. You’re freaking me out.” Her emotions were everywhere, and they were making the pain worse. “I think I got a triple whammy. Your emotions, my reaction to them. Your fear now. You don’t need to be afraid; I’m fine.”

I opened my eyes. The afternoon daylight was gone, and her room was almost dark. “You’re not calming down.”

Panic. Loss. Emptiness.

She took my hands in hers. They were freezing. “I can’t remember. I know what you took, but I remember even less now. I just know it came out of my mind going backward. It was hard to make sense of it all.”

I cursed. I hadn’t prepared her for the blackness. I struggled to sit but could only manage to prop myself up on my elbows. “I’ll fix it.”

“You don’t need to fix anything right now. You can’t even sit.”

“No.” I gave up and stayed on my back. “Part of you is missing. I didn’t even think about the way it would make you feel.”

“I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“I hurt you. When Jack takes things, he leaves empty space. Pain. That wasn’t my intention, but that’s what you feel, right?”