She doesn’t hold back now; Lacey just lies here and sobs. I hold her to me, fighting back the urge to rush to the bathroom and throw up. She fed him bleach. She fed him bleach, and I can’t make myself believe it. My horror deepens when I remember the look on Lacey’s face when I took her to my parents’ house for the first time: the panic in her eyes when she saw the religious icons and paintings on my parents’ living room walls. Fuck. I left her there for days.

“What happened, Lacey?” I murmur into her hair. I don’t really want to hear to be honest, but now that we’ve gotten to this point she needs to tell me. She needs to tell me every last detail; it’s vitally important she does. If she doesn’t, she’ll never face what happened. She starts tapping her fingers against the arm I have wrapped around her—pinkie, ring finger, middle finger, index finger. Index, middle, ring, pinkie. Back and forth, back and forth, clearly a nervous tic, a coping mechanism.

“He…drank it. I checked first. It didn’t smell so bad. He didn’t notice there was anything wrong with it until he put down the glass. And then…and then he dropped the tray from the bed and the eggs went everywhere. He started shaking. There was…there was blood. I ran to the door, but I couldn’t go. I turned and pressed my back against the wall, and I watched. He was spitting blood everywhere and clawing at his throat. It went on for ages. I waited and I waited, but he just kept on clawing at his throat. So I knew what I had to do. I climbed back up on the bed. Mallory…” Lacey chokes. Breathes. “Mallory thought I’d come to help him. He looked so relieved. I took one of his pillows, and I held it over his face. I pressed down as hard as I could, and I screamed. I begged him to die. I told him he had to, and then he did. As soon as he went still, I threw up onto his bed and then ran out of the room. I had scrambled eggs all over my feet. I grabbed a bag, gathered some clothes, took the money Mallory hid in his Bible and I ran. I ran and I ran and I ran and I—”

She continues talking, saying the same thing over and over again. I ran and I ran. This girl has never stopped running. I hold her to me as tight as I can and I let her cry. She’s hysterical for at least thirty minutes before exhaustion seems to catch up with her. That’s when I feel like I can talk to her and she will actually hear me.

“Lacey?” She’s not going to like this. “You should not be feeling guilty. That priest was right—Mallory was a sick man. You need to talk to Zeth, okay? You need to tell him all of this. And you need to tell him he’s your brother.”

She goes still, her crying slowing even further. “I can’t,” she says quietly.

“Sweetheart, you have to. He can help you. He has a right to know you share the same blood.”

The back of her head nudges my chin as she nods. “I know,” she whispers. “But I can’t tell him.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’ll know I’m dirty.” She shakes even more violently, sniffing. “He won’t…he won’t want me to be his sister. He won’t love me anymore.”

A pain way worse than my gunshot wound lances through me, right down to the core. I’ve never experienced anything like it before. I’m crying before I can even pull myself together to speak. “That’s not true, Lacey. That can never be true. Nothing will ever stop Zeth from loving you, no matter what, okay? But more importantly, you are not dirty. You never needed to confess what he did to you. You were a child. He abused the power he held over you when he should have cared for you.”

A shudder rolls through Lacey. It’s as though even imagining it—this Mallory guy being kind and caring for her the way he should have—disturbs her. “I know you think that, but it’s not the way I feel. I just can’t tell him, okay? I wouldn’t be able to find the words.”

I hold my breath, trying to think of something, anything to make her change her mind. I come up blank. “Okay, sweetheart. It’s okay. Try and get some sleep.”

******

She does eventually go to sleep, although I don’t. I lie in bed, running over and over everything that she’s told me. It’s late by the time she startles awake next to me. There’s no brief moment where she doesn’t remember what took place when she came to find me last night. No, the pain and shame are already there, lurking in her eyes when she opens them and looks at me.

“I’m sorry,” is all she says.

I feel like hugging her again, although I can tell by the way she draws her hands into her chest that she’s not ready for that now. I just shake my head at her, letting her know she shouldn’t ever, ever be sorry. “I’ve been thinking,” I say carefully. “You can’t tell Zeth what happened. How would you feel if I told him?”

She draws in a tight breath, and so do I. Neither of us exhale. We just look at each other, and I watch the internal debate going on in Lacey’s head manifest itself on her face—indecision, fear, panic. Maybe a little hope. She blinks first, then, carefully, slowly gives me a single nod of her head.

“And…how would you feel about me telling him you’re his—that you’re his sister?”

Lacey remains immobile; no blinking or nodding now. It takes her longer to come to a decision this time. Eventually, in a very small, tired voice, she says, “I think that would be okay.”

“Okay.” I climb out of bed, and I’m hit with a wall of vertigo and nausea that make me regret the sudden movement. I feel like shit, there’s no denying that, but I can not stay in bed all day recovering. I just can’t even tolerate the thought of it. Every single part of me throbs, but I’d much rather be walking about and in pain than lying there doing nothing. Lacey grabs hold of my wrist.