Thirteen
For a long time, Isimply stayed on the bed, naked and on my knees, my arms around myself. The cold I felt came from the inside, and there was no way to ward it off. I tried to wait for him. I tried to tell myself that everything would be fine, tried to tell myself this was just another misunderstanding that could eventually sort itself out.
All I had to do was wait.
I just had to wait.
Just wait, I told myself. It was something I now knew I was good at. Because now I also knew that all this time – I had been waiting.
For almost a decade, all I had done was wait for Marcus to come back.
So I just needed to do the same thing, I thought feverishly, and everything would be okay.
Marcus himself had promised me.
So wait.
Just wait.
I probably could have waited for an eternity, and I wouldn’t have minded.
If not for those cries.
When the strange, terrifying buzzing in my mind stopped—-
That was when I heard it.
Tiny soft cries—-
And they terrified me.
How those little cries terrified me because I knew – even without knowing where they came from – oh, I knew. Deep inside me, I knew those tiny soft cries had the power to destroy me.
Forcing my limbs to move, I slipped my arms into a silk robe and tied its sash around me before making my way out of the room.
The hallways were dark, and I had to fumble my way down the stairs.
The tiny soft cries continued.
I followed the sound until I realized they were coming from the basement. The door had been left ajar, and it silently swung open at one nudge of my fingers.