One word.
It landed harder than Chloe’s microphone ever had.
She looked at me.
Then at him.
“What do you mean, no?”
I could still remember that hallway.
Not perfectly.
Trauma leaves pieces instead of a clean story.
I remembered the alarm screaming.
I remembered my father’s arms around me.
I remembered coughing against his shoulder as he carried me down the stairs.
And I remembered asking him where Chloe was.
My mother had thought she was already outside.
My father had thought she had followed me from the bedroom.
For perhaps thirty seconds, everyone thought both twins were safe.
Then my mother counted the children standing on the lawn.
One.
Only me.
“You weren’t in the bedroom anymore,” I told Chloe.
Her lips parted.
“Where was I?”
My mother finally spoke.
“You had gone back.”
Chloe shook her head immediately.
“Back where?”
“The little room at the end of the hall,” Mom said.
Something flickered across Chloe’s face.
A memory trying to surface.
When we were little, Chloe slept with the same stuffed rabbit every night.
She called it Buttons because one of its eyes had been replaced with a brown button after the original fell off.
We had teased each other about plenty of childhood things.
I had never teased her about Buttons.
Not after the fire.
Chloe whispered, “My rabbit.”
Mom nodded.
“You went looking for it.”
A murmur moved through the guests and died just as quickly.
Chloe stared down at the wet stone beneath her knees.
“I don’t remember that.”
“We know,” Dad said.
She looked up sharply.
“Then how did Maya—”
Her voice stopped.
Now she understood what the answer had to be.
I remembered standing barefoot in the grass outside the burning house.
I remembered my mother grabbing my shoulders when I said Chloe was missing.
I remembered my father turning toward the front door and someone pulling him back because part of the ceiling had begun to collapse near the entrance.
And I remembered seeing something through an upstairs window.
A small hand.
Chloe’s hand.
She had been pounding weakly against the glass.
I was six years old.
I didn’t understand smoke inhalation.
I didn’t understand burns.
I didn’t understand that adults twice my size had already decided going inside was too dangerous.
I understood one thing.
