Chapter 19

NINETEEN

brOOKE

The pictures… oh my god. It’s Donny and me. Together. Together together.

It’s a younger version of me than the woman I’ve seen in the mirror since I woke up with amnesia. But still, me.

I’m beautiful and blonde and grinning at Donny, just as he is back at me. But not with the sinister grin I’ve seen occasionally break out on his face.

He’s… happy.

In the pictures, I’m happy, too.

I’m usually smiling at the camera, but in every shot, Donny’s gaze is firmly locked on me. The joy crinkling his eyes is because he’s looking at me.

This is just another trick , I try to tell myself. He’s faked these .

I don’t really believe that, though.

Something in a knowing place inside me, like a puzzle piece clicking into place, says these are real . The ghost is here. She’s in the pictures and she’s me and the hovering bits are so, so close I can taste them.

Donny and me.

I feel him. I feel me. I’m here. I’m right here, so close, tingling at the edges of my fingertips.

I stare harder at the pictures, reaching so hard for the rest of me. But all I can see is Donny. And the look on his face has me crumbling to the floor.

Donny’s looking at me like he?—

He’s looking at me like he…

Like he loves me.

He wasn’t lying. It was real. It was all real. Once, we meant something to each other.

I choke on a trapped sob.

It wasn’t all a lie to torment or control me. He does know me. In a few pictures, I’m actually looking back at him. And I’m looking at him like— like I?—

The sob breaks free from my chest.

I’m looking at him like I love him, too .

In the pictures, we’re young and wildly in love with each other. I look happier than I could ever imagine myself being .

Donny looks so young and delirious with happiness, too, but he’s… not carefree. I see that now, the longer I look.

There are deep shadows under his eyes and stress lines on his young forehead. The darkness I know in him so well now is there then, too. Does the ghost in the pictures see it? She looks oblivious, so lost in her own happiness.

Just then, the real flesh and blood Domhnall walks into the room, entering from the side with a half glass of whisky in his hand.

“Trying to run like always, Madison?” His voice is so cold.

“You’re just trying to mind-fuck me more. These are fake!” I scream as I grab my head, even though I know it’s not true. They’re real. I don’t know how, but they’re real.

“Oh come off it, Mads,” he jeers, stepping forwards. The ice in his glass is the only sound in the room. “You’re a good actress, but you’re not that good.”

“If it’s not fake then how could you do this to me?” I shout, gesturing accusingly with both hands. “You loved her.”

I wave wildly again at the largest hanging photo in the room. The two kids in it have no eyes except for each other, completely absorbed in their shared little world. “We look like we?—”

I break off and look at him in despair. I’ve been wondering where my family is ever since I woke up with no memory, and he’s been here this whole time? “Why didn’t you come for me when I went missing? Why are you doing this to me!”

“Why am I doing this to you ?” He scoffs in disbelief, dropping his facade for the only time since that one moment in the dungeon when he let his forehead fall against my spine. “Are you serious?”

I feel like I’m finally seeing the real Domhnall, and maybe I can only see it in him now that I’ve seen the pictures of him younger. He’s a wounded young man, capable of great love but shutting down every ounce of feeling inside himself.

“You’re going to keep on pretending you have amnesia and don’t remember meeting me years ago in Dublin?” he shouts.

I jerk at each loud syllable but stay where I am half crouched on the floor. He’s finally telling me what I begged him to from the very beginning.

His voice softens, eyes hard but distant. “You were two years older, and so fucking sophisticated. This gorgeous blonde American, promising the world to some poor Donegal fuck. I was such a clueless feck’n mark, wasn’t I?”

He turns back to me. “ Wasn’t I ? When you and your cunt father—” He cuts off, jaw tensing.

“What about him? Is he still alive?” I ask desperately. Domhn obviously hates me. But is there someone out there who might love me as I am now and not just my ghost?

“You disgust me,” Domhn seethes, and when I look back at him, there’s nothing of the young man from the photos. There’s only pure hatred left. “Still only wanting to please your pedophile father.”

His words shock me like a bucket of ice water thrown on my head. I suddenly feel sick. Is he just trying to be cruel again? “What the fuck does that mean?”

“Stop pretending you don’t know!” he keeps shouting.

And then he hurls the glass of whisky against the wall opposite where I’m still on my knees. I jump at the explosion of glass even though it’s nowhere near me.

“Just like you pretended you didn’t know then!” His voice quiets, but it’s only more dangerous. “He made me his dog. He pretended to be my mentor and then he raped me. Over and over and over. And you knew— ” His voice breaks on the last word, pointing his finger in accusation at me.

I’m shaking my head. “I didn’t.”

He laughs bitterly. “So now you’re done with the amnesia act.”

“I didn’t,” I deny again. I couldn’t have. The girl in that picture couldn’t have known?—

“You did. ”

“How do you know I did? There’s no way I could’ve?—”

“I know because you told me you’d seen!”

My shaking head stops at his words, too frozen in horror.

“You said you’d seen, and you were gonna go get all the money for us. You said for me ‘n Moira to meet you at the airport. That we’d go start a new life together.”

His face twists, again a mix of the young man in the photograph and the dark creature he’s become. “I was so ashamed when you said you knew. So full of self-loathing. That you’d seen. I couldn’t bear to look at you. But ya reached out and took my jaw, jus’ like this,” he reaches out, hand caressing empty air as he continues, brogue suddenly heavy, “an’ tol’ me, with your eyes full of dew an’ rage, that you’d go steal the only t’ing that bastard held dear and t’en we’d go start our life toget’er.”

He smiles cruelly, eyes focusing back on me as if returning to the present. “But you weren’t at the airport, were you? ‘Cause you’d already run. With that fucking monster , after ya knew what he’d done to me.”

“And to cap it off,” he laughs caustically, walking to the nearby bar cart nestled against the wall, his shoes crunching on the glass from the cup he already shattered, “you left all the illegal shit pointing to me.”

I’m still shaking my head. He’s wrong. “Something must’ve happened. I couldn’t get to you.”

“O-aah, I thought the same. Until I learn’t you’d fecked me over the same as you ‘n him did ta at least two other lads I know of. You were just a soulless pair o’ cons leavin’ a pat’ of destruction.”

He glares back at me, unscrewing the cap of the whisky and lifting the whole bottle to his lips. “You’re the hook ‘n he swoops in on the prey you soften up for ‘im. Cause he likes soft little boys, doesn’t he? At least he’s dead and burnin’ in hell now. ”

He stares at me for a long, hard, horrifying moment before he starts to swig gulps of whisky straight from the bottle.

And I just stay there stunned on the floor. My mind cascades with all he’s just told me.

No. There’s no way. No. NO .

I wouldn’t have— Not if I’d known what my father was?—

I’m not that kind of person. Absolutely no fucking way.

But then I blink, spirals starting to whirl in my head, thought after thought.

Because what if… I mean…

Wouldn’t anyone in my position say that? I’ve just been walking around assuming I was a good person because the me now wants to be.

But literally not a single person came forward when I went missing. Wouldn’t that indicate that I’m… not that great? I literally have no one in my life.

Okay, but there’s a difference between not having that many friends or family—or even being not that great a person and being the kind of incomprehensibly evil shit human being Domhnall is describing.

So no!

Of course fucking not.

I can’t be who he’s describing.

I know who I am inside. I might not know my name, but I know right and wrong. Good and bad. He’s lying. I mean, I’m not? —

I’m not a monster.

I’m not soulless.

Fuck the ghost! I don’t know her. She’s not me! I’m not responsible for whatever she did, or what she knew?—

I couldn’t possibly— Even if my father was. Oh god, especially if what he’s saying about my father is true. Oh god, I’m gonna be?—

I turn over and throw up all over the cushy, expensive rug. Once. Twice. Three times. Then I crawl away. I wipe my face on a clean part of the rug.

The rug is soft on my knees but rougher on my face. I rub my face on it again.

I look up at the picture of two people in love. All of their features drop away except their eyes. The scrunch lines around the edges. The shared shine in both pairs. Desperate adoration in his, as if she’s one of the few pure things left in a violent, cruel world. In hers, a shocked sense of joy. In mine . Like it’s happiness I’ve never felt before.

Everything shimmers.

How could she?

The boy in that picture loved the girl. And she loved him back.

I take one last look at Domhnall, still chugging whisky. The bottle that was three-fourths full when he started is almost empty.

Still on all fours, I scramble down the nearest hallway and into the dark.