Present Day
Sadie
Two

Shelby stuck her fork down into the salad, which replied with a satisfactory crunch She raised it to her lips, chewed.


The rain had smeared her dark makeup around her mute gray eyes, so much like Amanda's. Brittle Black hair curled around her pale face, which housed a sprinkling of faint freckles she endeavored to conceal. I looked away.


Lightning torched the sky, illuminating the dimly lit dining room-a long, dark table with a chair on either end, a family crest on one wall-her family crest-Shelby herself, clad in black, working on the sale she had devoured every night for probably her entire life.


I knew the time had come.


"Shelby." I said. "I need to talk to you"


Normally, I didn't speak in her presence. I was too scared; scared of her wrath and her fury. She was like a god to me, too cold and unlovelly and unrelenting to be much of a goddess. Today, I had to speak though.


Shelby paused, fork poised mid-bite. She blinked, stared at me, blinked in rapid succession. Her eyes sang to me a familiar melody. Dissappointment. Bitterness. Possibly hatred. Then her fork met her lips again, she chewed, and swallowed.


This was my affirmation to begin.


"There has been a death." I said. A headache began above my right eye, pulsing, throbbing,


Shelby registered nothing. Instead, she simply took another bite.


"Please, Shelby, listen to me." A part of me wished in that moment that I could call her "Mother" or "Mom". But Shelby had never wished to be my mother. She was Shelby and she was about to kill me. Maybe I deserved that. Nonetheless, I wished to call her "Mother" before I died.


"I will listen to you when you tell me something important." Shelby rolled the words off her tongue, contradicing herself. She had been listening to me, regardless of whether my words resonated with importance or not.


"There has been a death." I repeated myself, my fingers tapping a haphazard beat along my quivering thighs. Fear drenched me in a cold sweat. The cut along my palm finally began to throb, as it should have been all along.


Shelby's fork clanged against the bottom of the bowl-staccato clangs that almost registered nervousness. The room was bursting with tension. I shut my eyes for just a moment.


"Sunshine, I had the weirdest dream last night. I dreamed I died. I dreamed you killed me."


"A death?" Shelby sneered, as if that was something totally uncanny at a time like this...as if she hadn't spent all day searching desperately for Amanda.


I opened my eyes. "Yes. A death."


Shelby looked at me as if I was a rat, caught in a trap by it's leg, just suffering in her site. She enjoyed that. "You don't say? Prey tell, who died, Sadie? Who died?"


Your favorite. Amanda.


I couldn't make my mouth form words. I couldn't do anything but sit there, helpless. Shelby's long fingers, like talons, laid the fork down gently and then moved to the table top where they began to tap a gutteral, rhythmic beat, like the one I was playing on my thighs. "Now you're scared. Are you scared of me, Sadie?"


Not scared. More than scared. Petrified.


"Who died?"


My lips tried to form words, but all that I could emit was a few gasps of air; my teeth clanged against each other.


"Who died?"


Shelby was standing now, pushing her chair back from the other end of the table. She towered over me, so cruel. "I said, who died?"


Her voice rolled out like a foghorn. Then there came the wine glass that had precariously sat beside her salad bowl. She hurled it at me-hurled it at my head. It was too late to scream. I threw my hands up, and tried to dodge, watching the glass make wobbling rotations in the air. It grazed my shoulder and slammed into the wall behind me, shattering into a million pieces. They fluttered to the floor like snow.Or was everything just lapsing into fearful slow motion now?


I quivered.


"Who died?"


My hand felt for the picture, wedged between my tank top and my bra. I slammed it down on the table.


Silence.


Then: "Amanda died." I whispered. "Amanda is dead."


I watched Shelby's anger grow to a point of no return, and I knew that I was going to get hurt, and that no matter how fast I ran, she was going to catch me.


Shelby walked around the table, slowly, cat-like. I watched her high heels clank loudly against the black tile. She ran her tongue over her teeth over and over again.


"Amanda isn't dead."



"She is." I whispered. "I saw her with my own eyes."


Shelby paused in front of me, looking down upon me. Her grey eyes had morphed. She was a thunderstorm now, a child of wind and air and fury. She shoved me and I fell weightlessly from the chair to the floor, landing on my side, hard.


"You're lying to me. Because you hated Amanda. I loved Amanda."


I was so afraid, but I had to speak. Had to pierce an arrow through her words.


I sat up, slowly onto my knees, and then, crept to my feet. I faced Shelby. "I loved Amanda."


"You killed her!" Shelby screamed. "I said you killed her! Did you hear me?" She took me by both shoulders, shaking me. I was numb. As usualy, I let her. "You killed her!"


Shelby shoved me again. I connected solidly with the wall where the wine glass had broken just moments earlier. Shelby followed, slamming me hard in the side of my head with the right side of her hand, balled into a fist.


I heard a ringing in my ears, but I pushed the darkness away, swerving around Shelby. I tripped, scrambled to my feet, and somehow, I ran. I ran down the hall, blindly, arms leading the way. Eventually, I found the back door and I dove headlong into the overgrowth beyond it.


I loved Amanda.

8 Months Earlier
Zak

The moment I laid eyes on Desmond Hafner, I knew somehow that I should be afraid of him.


"You may sit." He said not turning from the window where he stood, back to me, surveying the clipped lawn beyond.


I sort of collapsed into a chairr, adjacent the desk, a great floor-to-ceiling fish tank to my left, at my elbow. In my peripheral vision, I watched the door click shut, and my fear mounted just a little.


I shouldn't be afraid.


Fear was a completely new emotion.


"I've heard a lot about you, Zak Foreman. I don't know which parts are true exactly, but I think I can determine one thing in the midst of these trivial details."


I sat up a little straighter, as Desmond spoke to me. Even if I was afraid, I knew it was better to fake calm. I hoped the man couldn't see my feet, nervously tapping.


"I know," Desmond turned, slowly, and fixed me with almost violet eyes. "I know, Zak Foreman, that you would do anything to...um..." He contemplated his next words, looking up at the ceiling. "Find your father."


I swallowed. A fish darted past me through the deep blue oblivion, glinting silver in the low-lights of Desmond Hafner's study. Beads of sweat had broken out on my forehead.


"Zak," Desmond stopped pacing, and eased again into the chair adjacent me, behind his desk. It was the chair of a man who possessed much authority. "You're smart to come to the man in charge. I knew that eventually you would come. I'm not going to lie to you, I can make your mission worthwhile. I can give you exactly what you desire...your father...easily."


I still didn't speak. The lights overhead, trapped in steel scances, flickered, beams dashing across two walls covered in bookcases. "But there's a catch." I said at last, looking up into the eyes of the man that had inevitably ruined my life.


Desmond laughed, a stiff, dry, laugh, hands clasped before him. It seemed as if, hearing his voice, that he hadn't laughed a day in his life. "Let's think of it this way. I need you. And you need me. That is how it goes in life. Always. Does it make sense to you?"


How on earth could Desmond need me?


"What could you want from me?" I asked, my voice suprisingly level.


Desmond's lips curled. "Well, Foreman, you don't need to know much. At first anyway. But I will require you, if you truly wish to recover your father, to play a role for me."


I waas confused, but I slowly nodded, leaning back in my chair. "What kind of role?"


Desmond opened a drawer, pulling a folder from within. He slowly laid it on the desk between us, turning it aorund, sot ath ic ould read the title written on a label.


"Betrayer?" I said, aloud.


"That is your role." Desmond said. "Would that intimidate you? To betray?"



I read the word again and again until it blurred in my vision, knowing somehow, already, that it would change my life. "I guess it would depend on who you are asking me to betray."


Desmond wasn't looking at me. "Would you betray someone you loved? To have your father back?"


My head hurt. The fish tank beside me began to hum. To have my father back..that was all I wanted as of right now. All I had wanted for three years. But something about this deal seemed wrong. I wanted revenge. Did I want to play into the hands of the man who I wished to see die?


I looked up at Desmond whose eyes were now trained so strangely on me that I felt as if he was shooting lazors at me.


"I'll do it." I whispered.


The corner's of Desmond's mouth turned up just barely. He was pleased. "Good. Let me explain how this will work." He leaned on his desk. "I am placing you into a position where, if you play this role correctly, you will learn exactly what you wish to know about your father's whereabout's. The longer you play, the more knowledge you will gain, so that it is a perfectly balanced exchange." Desmond inhaled, loudly. "Everything you need to know is in the folder, Zak. The role I'm asking you to play shouldn't be entirely difficult."


"Because I'm superman, you're saying?" I asked, dryly.


"No. Because you've never really found a niche, have you? Like a leaf in a rushing river. You haven't exactly found your role yet. That makes it easier for you to fill a specific role."


I looked down at the folder, hating the fact that his words rang so true. "What if I want to quit playing?"


"Then you can. No strings attached. But you'll never see your father again."

Present Day
Sadie

I awoke, sitting on the bathroom floor, tile unbearably cold beneath my bare legs. My whole body hurt, my mouth completely dry.


The house was still.


I found my feet beneath me and flipped the faucet on, drenching my face in the frigid water. When I arose, water droplets trickling down my cheeks, my reflection in the mirror was dis-settling. My eye was purple, and swollen. Not my first black eye, but definitely my worst.


Zak was going to flip.


As if on cue, the cordless phone laying beside me on the tile where I had spent the night, began to ring, the effort sending it skittering in circles. I lunged for it, hoping beyond all hope that the rings had not awakened Shelby.


"Hello?"


"Hey." Zak's voice sent waves of perfect cam splashing throughout my body from head to toe, and I wondered how that was humanely possible. For one voice to so perfectly complete me. "I'm outside of your house. You didn't answer your cell."


I remembered Shelby standing before my bedroom door upstairs, waiting for me late that night when I had crept back home. I had locked myself in the bathroom instead, rather than face her. Now, I had no cellphone.


"I'll be out in-" I glanced up at my reflection, all calm evaporating. "Uh...Five minutes." I hung up and lunged for Amanda's makeup bag beneath the sink. The concealer didn't do wonders but it was immensely better than black.


When I saw that Shelby was in her bedroom, I dashed up to my bedroom and threw the first clothes combination I could find, onto my shivering body. I looked like a disheveled mess but I had come to the conclusion that Zak just didn't care anymore.


He was waiting in his black pickup truck, parked along the rickety gravel road leading up to the house...the fortress.The morning was cloudy and dark, but no rain fell. Today, the earth was grieving for Amanda in a tearleess way. Like me. Numbly, I pulled the passender door open and slid inside of Zak's truck, ensuring it was closed tightly behind me.


The entire truck smelled strongly of axe-the scent of Zak. I inhaled, ears picking up on the strains of some ancient 80's love ballad on the radio. Everything here in this tiny vehicle cab was familiar and perfect. I took it in with every one of my sense's, my whole body longing to be here forever in this safety.


Zak was looking at me. I could feel his eyes. His fingers idly stroked his car keys, trapped in the ignition, but he didn't start the truck. "I thought about you all night long." Zak said, awkwardly.


For some reason, tears pricked at my eyeballs, but I pushed them back. "Zak," I breathed.


"I'm going to take you back, where you don't want to go." Zak said. "Baby, is that okay?"


I knew exactly where he was going to take me. I nodded.


Zak turned the keys. The truck hummed to life. Gravel skittered up around us, and I braced myself.

8 Months Earlier
Zak

Her eyes might have been blue, but there was a rim of violet, so startling, so riveting. They were her father's eyes. I could see that even from here. They looked fertively left and right as if she was searching for something, or someone.


I studied her through the window, for something like five minutes as she approached, wondering if I was strong enough to do this-to hurt an innocent girl who, given any other scenario, I might have been attracted to.


I was strong enough.


She was just feet away now. I inhaled, reached for the door handle. This had to be timed perfectly.


Open.


WHAM!


Just like that...we collided.


I braced myself for the descent, reaching for anything to break my fall to the cement-no, rather to break our fall. Nothing. My back connected solidly first. Then my head. In a whirlwind of flailing limbs and streaks of thick black air, she fell. Desperately, I reached out to break her fall, but she collided with the sidwalk beside me. Cars whooshed by to our left.


Grimacing, I forced myself to take deep breaths. I opened my eyes. Sadie Gabriella Hafner looked down at me, lips parted in suprise, those violet eyes wide.


Phase one had been executed perfectly.


I opened my mouth, but the apology planned for me didn't come spilling out. I found, instead, that I could say nothing. So, I sat, back aching, Sadie following my action. Momentary nothingness. Then I found my way to my feet, extending a hand to the girl that was, inevitably, the key to my father.


She took it, both of us still completely silent. She was facing me now, still appearing uprised. I took in her slick black hair, those eyes, and full lips. She was tiny, standing about at my chin, dressed in a black t-shirt and ripped jeans. She had split her knee open in the fall.


I found I was just sort of staring stupidly.


She smiled. "I think that after this I'm going to start looking where I'm going."


Look, Sadie. Please look. Don't listen to the things I'm going to tell you. Run far, far away from me, and don't look back. Leave this town. They're going to come for you.


The words rushed to my head, like a blow. I inhaed, and slipped effortlessly into my role. "I take all blame. I didn't see you there. How do you feel?"


She stared down at her scraped knees. "I"ll be sore tomorrow, but I'm a fighter. You look at me as if I've seen you before."


Her eyes met mine again. They were eyes I had studied so many times in photographs pressed into the folder that had become me destiny. The betrayer's folder. "I'm Zak." I said. I didn't extend my hand because Sadie didn't look like the type to shake hands, even with strangers. "I"m sorry for staring..." I trailed off. "But you're beautiful."

Present Day
Sadie


Zak and I sat in his truck, parked along the overhang above the river. My arms were crossed over me as if I was vainly attempting to hold myself together. For Zak. For the world.

"You're shivering." Zak said.

I found I was. Summers in Crossroads, Tennessee were scorching, yet I was shivdring. I tried to still my quivering body.


"Sunshine,, I had a dream last night. I dreamed I died. I dreamed you killed me."


Zak slid over beside me, so that we were touching shoulders. He didn't put his arm around me, didn't embrace me...Instead, we just sat in perfect silence. A murderer and her savior.


I wondered if he could feel how sick I was with a mere touch. Could he really believe all this time that I was a perfect angel? A part of me wanted him to believe in a Sadie Gabriella Hafner that had never existed...The Sadie that he believed I was. It was a lie, but I was a clever liar, and now wasn't the time to blow the cover off my forsaken identity. Then he would kow what I had done, and he would see just exactly how flawed I was.


"Why did you take me here? To the river?" I looked at Zak, eye's glancing off his strong jaw, slender nose, all sillhouetted perfectly.


Zak stared straight ahead, off through the trees and the underbrush to the river far, far below. It seemed like an eternity passed before he looked down at me, with those eyes that made my heart stop beating. "Sadie, I took you here because I'm afraid of losing you."


I shut my eyes, absorbing his words. "Losing me?" I whispered.


"Yes. I can see it in your eyes, Sadie. Somethings tormenting you. I know you can't just will it away. You never can." He leaned back, looking up at the truck cab's ripped ceiling. "You're a fighter, but you can't fight alone. Let me help you. Together we'll slay the dragon. Doesn't that make more sense?"




The words seemed disconnected in my numb brain. "Zak," I said. "You can't help me fight this battle."


"Why?" He turned. "You don't always have to fight alone, Sadie."


Last night swam before my eyes. Shelby's screaming. The punch. My arms thrown up over my face to defend myself. My run through the moonlight, that inevitably retraced itself back to the front door. So many nights I had run like that, dreaming of escape. But I never had, because the fortress I was supposed to call home always brought me back.


Zak was wrong. I wasn't a fighter. I was just a girl who was forced to fight for survival. For a second, I let my hand slide over to Zak's. My fingertips touched his.


You don't have to fight alone, Sadie.


Something about his words unlocked a feeling long suppressed inside of me. I looked down at the river, running my thumb over Zak's. What awaited me at the river where just yesterday I had seen Amanda's corpse, underwater...Cold, lifeless eyes fixed on nothingness...?


"Sunshine, I had the weirdest dream last night. I dreamed I died.I dreamed you killed me."


I slowly unlocked the passenger door and reached for it's knob. The door fell open. Balmy, summer air rushed in to fill the truck cab. Zak's car key's blew back and forth like a pendelum in the breeze.


Zak came after me, slamming the door behind him. He took one step, shoulder's brushing mine, and slowly rolled my fingers into his until he was holding my hand.


"I'm not letting you fight alone, today."


The feeling continued to course through me. What trigger were his words pulling deep inside of me? I had heard them before. Long ago perhaps in the years of my life that lay so long before...the years whose secret's I had locked away from myself.


Zak kept his hand in mine as we tumbled through the thick underbrush. I already felt weak and tired, but I kept my head held high.


It took us atleast fifteen minutes to reach the great roaring river, which today had lapsed into a whispered. It spread out before us, the offspring of thuder cold and raging, just as Shelby was. Perhaps she was a child of the river too.


We stood side by side on the cliff overlooking it, where yesterday we had jumped. Where yesterday, I had found Amanda. I shut my eyes and breathed, sickened by the lapse in my memory that lay there.

6 Months Earlier
Zak



Sadie giggled, looking up at me, sleepily. "Zak, I can hear your heartbeat." She pressed her ear to my chest.


"Somebody's sleepy." I poked her.


"Not me." She said, her head on my shoulder. "I'm not sleepy at all." Her words were slurred.


"You can go to sleep on my shoulder." I said. "I won't bite. I'm not a vampire."


"Well," Sadie contemplated this. "If I do sleep, promise you won't leave without saying goodbye?"


I slid one arm around her. "I promise." I began to sing. "Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep little..."


Sadie giggled again. "You're not my mommy, Zak."


"Thank goodness." I said, looking down at her. Her eyes, thick with sleep, were still openly trusting. She had only known me for two months, yet I knew she would lay her life in my hands withouth a second look. I slowly turned, looking at the television, which was alive with some cheesy horror movie, the attacking alien nothing but a man in a foam suit.


Sadie's head grew heavier on my shoulder. She would be asleep any minute. "Zak," She mumbled. "Did your mommy ever sing you lullabies?"


I was tempted to brush the hair back from her eyes, but I did not. Her question swam in the open air. I swallowed and lied, "Yes, she did. Every night. She said I was a cranky baby."


"Did her voice hypnotize you?" Sadie's own voice grew thicker and thicker with sleep. "I read that a child grows calm at the sound of it's mother's voice."


"I don't remember." I said. "I was a baby. A fat, cranky baby."


Loud organ msic blared from the TV. Eye shut, Sadie smiled a little. "My mother never sang to me. But there was a mobile over my crib, with glittering stars and planets and it put me to sleep...without her." She paused, letting out a sleepy but happy sigh. "I fly solo."


I poked her cheek. "Not anymore."


But she was gone. Asleep.


I tried to watch the movie, but it just felt wrong, like Sadie sleeping contentedly on my shoulder. Save the obnoxious music rippling from the TV, the house was silent. I looked up at the ceiling, wondering when Sadie's mother would be home. In the last two months in which I had known Sadie, we had been ultimately inseperable, and yet I kenw next to nothing about her family. Except that, Shelby didn't sing lullaby's. Ever.


We had that in common.


My eyes fluttered around the parlor. Faded floral wallpaper, an ancien television, stiff upholstered furniture...this house wasn't lived in, exactly. It was inhabited of course, but the old home was perfectly furnished, and perfectly looked after, which ultimately made it cold and not broken in.


The longer I sat, Sadie asleep on my shoulder, the more powerfully I know that it was time to take a look around, while Shelby was gone and Sadie was lost to the world. I took one last look at her, mouth open, breathing soft, eyelashes fluttering.


"She never sang me lullaby's." I whispered. "Not once. But I think she would have if she could."


I slowly eased Sadie down onto the couch, rubbed feeling back into my asleep arm, and knowing she was way too out of it to notice, turned the TV up. If Shelby came home, she wouldn't hear me prowling around her perfect little home.


I stepped out into the hall, eerily aware of how dark the house was. There was a staircase to my left, and I climbed it, every other step moaning beneath me. There was another long hallway at the top of the staircase, dimly lit by the full moon piercing through one fixed window. I took a left, feeling my way along until I reached a doorway. I was in luck.


This had to be Sadie's room.


There was a canopy bed, unmade. The walls were a light purple, window clad in filmy white drapes. Pictures lay haphazardly on a white rolltop desk Guilt surged through me as I opened the closet door.


I paused. Dresses. White dresses. White little girl dresses. The closet was dusty. It had to be used for storage. There was a bureau in the corner. I shut the cloest door and peeped into the desk. What I had initially thought were pictures in frames now yielded just empty frames. I frowned. This was a strange room. Something about it felt...wrong.


I stepped again out into the hall, shutting the door behind me.


There was a full bathroom along the hallway and at the end, the master bedroom. I didn't go near it, instead pulling open the door on the polar opposite end.


Stairs led up into blackness-rickety plywood stairs.


An attic?


I didn't want to move up the stairs, but I had learned for two months exactly how to put my conscience behind me. It all came with playing the role. I shut the door behind me and crept soundlessly up the stairs.

Present Day
Sadie



I clung to Zak's hand like it was my lifeline. Frankly, it was My eyes remained shut. My head ached from trying to remember.


"Tell me what battle you're fighting." Zak whispered. "Put a name to the dragon. Then I can help."


I'm the dragon, Zak...I'm the enemy here.


I didn't answer Zak. Instead, I kepy me eyes shut. All I could conjur up now was the face of Amanda's corpse. Even in death she had such a lovelly face...Amanda had always been like a beautiful angel. Flawless. So many nights, my jealousy had raved...nights when I wished I was Amanda, and that I was Shelby's favorite...Nights when I had pretended that I was the one Shelby had always loved.


But when morning came, reality settled and I realized again that Amanda would always be the one who was loved because Amanda was perfect.


I was flawed.


I pressed in closer to Zak, the only other being on this planet that had ever loved me more than Amanda, and that horrible jealousy washed over me again.


I was jealous of a dead girl.


Why wouldn't her death calm the jealous raving inside of me?


"Zak," I opened my eyes. "Zak, I don't know how to fight it. I don't know how."


Zak pressed one hand against my cheek. "You have to talk to me."


"I want to remember." I said, contemplating my words, so that I wouldn't divulge too much. "I want to remember a secret I'm keeping from myself."


Zak pushed one strand of hair behind my ear. "The solution is simple, Sadie. Exchange a secret for a secret. Tell me a secret in exchange for remembering one. You can only keep so many secrets at a time before you could explode."


I licked my lips. His solution sounded sketchy. But I wanted to remember. Wanted to remember the night Amanda died. Wanted to remember everything. Wanted to proove myself not guilty, even though I knew I was.


"Okay Zak. I'll do it. But let me whisper it."


Zak leaned closer. His hair tickled my cheek.


"Zak," I sid, officiating the new bearer of my secret. "My entire life I loved Amanda with an unfathomable love. But," I swallowed. "Every night I would wonder what it would be like if she died" The words fell into his ear. "And now she is dead. And I'm still jealous."


I pulled back, bracing myself. Any minute now, Zak would look at me with repulsion. My secret was repulsive.


Zak raised his head. The wind whipped his hair back and forth still as he slowly turned to look at me. There was no repulsion there in his eyes.


Instead, he leaned ever closer to me, and kissed me on the forehead. "Sadie, it's my turn to whisper in your ear."


I forced air into my lungs and nodded, turning my head.


Zak's breath tickled my cheek. "Sadie Hafner, I know without a doubt, that you have been loved much, much, much more than Amanda."


My lips trembled. "That's not the truth, Zak. It's not a secret if it's a lie."


"Shelby loved Amanda more, but she was the only one, Sadie. Shelby is the only one who loved Amanda more than you."


For the second time in one day, Zak's words unlocked something inside of me-something very deep inside of me. I leaned against him and I shut my eyes. In the blackness, I could see Amanda's gaunt face. She was scared. Her lips were whispering the name she had always called me. "Sunshine...Sunshine...Sunshine..."


I tried to shake her face from my mind, but I found I could not because it was a memory.


The next face that prevailed was one that I had not see in so long that I had almost forgotten it. Yet here it was, quivering beyond my eyelids, reaching for me.


My father's face.


Qualms of rejection, and fear, and 9 year's worth of waiting for rescue pulsed through my veins. I opened my eyes.

6 Months Earlier
Zak



I climbed the rickety plywood steps, cautiously, the top portion bathed in a disturbing darkness. These stairs themselves were more horrific than the horror movie downstairs.


The attic above was very cold. It was not a typical attic, hewn from rough beams. Instead, it was wallpapered in a dark, dark green. I could make out nothing but shadow.


I searched the wall beside me for a light switch, and was in luck.


The attic rippled to life.


There were a neat row of scances along one wall, statue heads bearing long electric candles. There were two doors-big, rough, heavy doors. Something about these seemed much more formiddable than those along the downstairs hallway.


I picked the first door.


Cold dusty air rushed out to greet me. Before me, there lay what appeared to be a sitting room-one upholstered chair, and a sagging, faded red loveseat. A metal box of sorts sat between them on a wooden table, opened a crack. Another door rested in the back of the room, leading even farther into the attic.


I stepped closer, my feet sinking into an oriental rug. For a moment, I stood, listening for footsteps downstairs. Nothingness.


I faced the metal box, running my hand along it. There was a knob-a dial. This was a safe, left unlocked. I pushed the door the rest of the way open and looked inside. I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't this.


There was a picture inside of the safe, trapped in a guilded frame. It portrayed a little girl, lingering in the stage between infancy and toddler. Her auburn hair was pulled back with a yellow ribbon and her eyes were wide and twinkling. One chubby hand reached for the camera.


I took a step back, not knowing why I did.


The child's eyes seemed to follow me, looking, in a sense, desperate now. How had that happened?


I let the safe door close again, save one crack, and I stood there, feeling a little ping of guilt again for intruding on that...relic of sorts.


I backed from the sitting room. There still remained the door beyond and the door to my left, but I felt somehow as if I had intruded in on a hallowed moment in the lives of someone who had sat in these chair and it felt dirty.


I turned the lights off and descended as silently as possible down the stairs.


I was done snooping. I peeped out of the window in the parlor at the driveway. It was still empty, my beater truck always parked down the street, as Sadie requested.


She was still asleep, soundly, on the couch, hair wisping out around her on the pillow. I considered just leaving but I had promised her a goodbye. "Sadie," I shut off the TV, and shook her shoulder. "Sadie."


Her eyes opened just a little and she looked up at me. "Did I sleep?" She blinked fast.


"You did. You don't have to wake up now. I'm just saying goodbye."


"Wait." Sadie sat up, groggily, and then crept to her feet, swaying with drowsiness. She wrapped both arms around my neck. "Goodbye Zak," She whispered sleepily.


"Goodbye." I said softly, returning her hug for just a moment.


"I'm gonna go to bed." Sadie released me and stumbled towards the hall, tripping and jamming her shoulder against the wall.


"You're exhausted. Sleep on the couch. I said.


"No." She retorted, quickly. "Shelhy wouldn't like that." She took another groggy step.


"Wait," I hurriedly crossed the room and wrapped one arm around her waist. "I'll help you."


Sadie's head collapsed against my shoulder again. "Okay," She said. "U-Upstairs."


I helped her up the first flight of stairs, her ankles twisting. "Why are you so sleepy?" I teased. "Sleepyhead."


She omitted a quiet, little yawn. "I was up last night."


"Doing what?" We made it up the last step.


Sadie murmured something that I couldn' hear, growing heavier. I steered her towards her bedroom, half dragging her. At the doorway, she shook her head. "No, no." She said. "That's Amanda's room."


I nearly dropped her onto the floor, looking past her into the lavendar room. "Where is your room then?"


She pointed up with a flippant finger. "Up--up there."


The attic?


"I'll go up by myself." Sadie said, teetering a little. "I'll be fine, Zak."


"No way." I said. "Come on." Before she could protest, I picked her up like a small child. She wasn't heavy at all and I managed to open the door leading again up to the attic. I had been up here too much for one night.


"You're strong." Sadie whispered, eyes shutting again. She was out.


It was a wonder I didn't trip going up the rickety steps. At the top I didn't even bother with the light switch. "This door?" I pointed to the door to the right. Sadie didn't answer.


I got the door open and stepped inside the room beyond.


It was small with one tiny window, the size of a porthole, taking in the mountains beyond. There was a twin-sized bed with a quilt pressed up agsint one wall and a chest against the other. A desk as rickety as the stairs sat under the window. The walls were a stained yellow, but I could make out traces of butterfly's stenciled on one.


"This is your room?" I asked Sadie.


She said nothing.


"Why is Amanda's room so much nicer than yours?"


She still said nothing.


I eased her down onto the bed, and haphazardly covered her in the quilt, feeling altogether awkward.


"Zak, " Sadie whispered softly, not opening her eyes.


"Yes?"


"Thank you."


I smiled. "You're welcome." On my way out, I stopped at the door and paused.


Sadie was humming a lullaby.


It occured to me that she had heard me. Downstairs. I shut the bedroom door, cast one fast glance around the attic space and went down the stairs. For the hundredth time in two months, I hated who I was becoming...the man Desmond was making me into. I didn't hate the part of me that spent his evening's with Sadie, laughing and talking and just sitting in a comfortable silence.


No, I hated the monstrous part of me that spent those evening's anyway, knowing that eventually, I would have to turn from a lover to one who betrayed.