10 – 3

Telling Milo of the mess I'd made didn't take long. He'd been there for most of it, for those long and drudging hours spent limping down an empty road. It was only the end that he'd missed. Only the end, where the harm had been done. He listened well, quiet and still from start to end, slowly turning his mug of tea in the cradle of his hands. After I was done, after the last of my foolishness was laid bare beneath the sun's revealing light, I found I could no longer bear to hold up my head. I let it droop, my gaze falling to the tabletop. For a moment, there's naught but the sound of breathing and the gentle scrape of ceramic on wood. Then, he asks, “Is that everything?”

My head jerks back up, shock and indignance catching in my throat. They make a tangle of words in my mouth, tripping and spluttering until I manage to answer, “Is that not enough?!”

Milo lifts a hand. Apology in his dark, shadowed eyes. “I meant: is there more, or...?”

I shake my head, a bit embarrassed. “No, that's – that's all of it.” He nods, and I wait until I can no longer to ask, “How do I fix it?”

“You can always apologize,” he offers.

“I know that!” I snap, frustration and shame sharpening my tone. I wince, closing my eyes. Doing that is what brought me here, and I'll not have it bringing me further! Deep breath in, let out slow. I open my eyes to see censure in the furrow of Milo's brow. “I'm sorry, I just – what I said to her, it...will it be enough?”

For a minute, he doesn't answer. Somewhere in the house is a bathroom. In it, a girl with ink-black hair and sky-blue eyes. She's wondering if staying is worth the cost. “You have siblings?” he finally asks.

What? “Yes,” I answer, “why?”

“When they fought with you,” he says, “and hurt you, was it enough when they said sorry?”

They rise from my memory: years of fights, over some of the dumbest things imaginable. “Sometimes,” I say, “when they meant it. But this isn't like that! This is different! She is different!”

Milo nods. “Alright,” he concedes, and I fall back against my chair. When had I leaned forward? When, for that matter, had I started shouting? I hadn't meant to, and didn't want to, but the echo of my voice rings in the quiet of the room. Deep breath in, let it out slow. I can't keep doing this. I look to Milo with regret, and he accepts with a quirk of his mouth. Then, mercifully, he speaks. Asking, “Too different for 'sorry' to mean anything?”

Shake my head. “No,” I answer, and it's soft. Forlorn and hopeful. “But she – she's nearly died. Twice in...what, ten days? Because of me. Now there's this. I just...I don't want her to leave.”

“Of course you don't.” Milo agrees. His eyes and smile are softly sympathetic. “Why would you?”

“She could, though,” I say it quickly, in a voice roughened by a knot in my throat. “And – and what if she does? What do I do then?”

His answer comes quick. “What – would – you do?” he asks me, and I don't understand. He goes on, “Say you're right, and all of this is your fault. It's not, but...say she's had enough and wants to go home. What would you do?”

The answer leaves my mouth before I can think. It's absent pride or shame and all the truer for it. “Beg her not to,” I answer.

Milo nods, spreading his hands and freeing his trapped and empty mug. “So,” he says, “tell her.”

Alarm rushes up my spine, pushing my shoulders back and my eyes wide. “Tell her what?”

“Everything,” he says, as I feared he would.

Once again, I answer before thinking, “I can't!” I protest.

“Why not?” He challenges, “How is this worse than what you've said to her already?” I don't answer. I can't tell her. I just can't. A thread of steel in his voice. “Zira. Is it?” I shake my head, refuse to answer aloud. “Then you can't make it worse.”

I shake my head again. “But I – I...” I trail off. Why don't I want to tell her? What's wrong with me?

Out of pity, I should think, Milo offers, “She cares a lot about you, y'know? I bet she wants to work this out as much as you.”

“You think so?” I ask, “Really?”

“Really,” he says, nodding. I want to believe him, but there is still a small weed of doubt that refuses to be uprooted and torn away. From behind the closed door to the hallway comes the sound of running steps, too light to be anyone but Lavinia. I brace myself: for her arrival, and for who's sure to follow it.

- - -

Adelaide-in-miniature, the Queen of Splinters herself collides with the isolation that my talk with Milo had created and utterly destroys it, like a comet of bare, slapping feet with a wet-woven braid as her tail. She speeds past the table, no regard given to those sitting at it, before coming to a halt in front of the stove that simmers gently, topped with pans and pots full of food. She tears a link of sausage in half with a savage bite before rising up onto her toes to pull a plate from the nearby cupboard. The other half disappears as she begins to pile the plate high, mumbling, “Thought I'd starve in there,” between open-mouthed chews.

Even with my eye on the door I can see the fond, loving annoyance with which Milo rolls his eyes. “Close your mouth when you're eating,” he admonishes. Lavinia falls into a seat at the table with a huff of air and a clatter of cutlery.

“Why's it matter?” she asks, through a mouthful of food.

“Because it's gross,” he answers plainly. “And – are you just not saying 'hello' to people anymore?”

“I just saw you!” she protests, though she swallows before she does, “It was – maybe – an hour ago!”

“Sure,” Milo agrees, “but am I the only one here?”

There's a sullen quiet that follows, ended by a reluctantly muttered, “Morning, Zira.”

I manage to pull myself away from watching the empty door. They're not here yet, and if they're coming, I can't hear them. Lavinia has grease on her cheeks and what looked like a half-loaf of bread in her mouth. “Morning,” I offer. It's quiet and tentative. Clarke was with them in the bathroom. She could have done with Adelaide as I did with Milo, which meant that Lavinia might know what I did. But she wouldn't know how sorry I am for it.

How could she, when Clarke herself doesn't? The half becomes a quarter, and she chews obnoxiously close-mouthed at Milo until giving an exaggerated swallow. “So,” she says, and in that little word I hear it. She knows.

Milo hears it too. “Lavinia...” he warns.

She looks back, innocent. “What?”

He's not fooled. Not for a moment. “You know what. It's not any of your business.”

“She saved my mom's life,” Lavinia answers, “so it kind of is.” He doesn't have an answer for that. There isn't one, I should think. It makes senses that if sides were to be chosen, I might have no one on mine.

“It's fine,” I tell Milo, “Truly, it is.” He doesn't look as if he'll listen, so I don't give him the chance to intervene for me again. Turn my regard to Lavinia, her false-innocence gone. In its place is a blend of curiosity and disappointment. She thought better of me, it would seem, and wants to know what made me fail. “So,” I say back.

“You made her cry,” she says.

“I know,” I say, and nothing else. There's little else to say.

“You should say you're sorry,” she tells me, with the confidence of someone who believes with their whole heart that such a thing can never fail.

“I will,” I tell her. The bright green eyes she shares with her mother search the golden-brown ones I share with mine. There's no lie hiding in them, so she nods.

“Good,” she declares. Then, a warning delivered at the point of a fork, “Don't do it again.”

“Never,” I promise. Sun Above, Wandering Lost, I pray to you: let me keep it. Please, let me keep it.

Conversation in the hall. It's them. Anxiety runs hot through my blood, light and unpleasant in my chest. I know what I need to do, what I'm going to do. I just have no idea how.