I want to show you something, he'd said.

What is it? My grave? I asked myself, staring out the window of his Tesla as we turned onto his street. Why did I agree to this? Where has my common sense gone?

Ciar's voice joined the chorus, resuming its regular chant. Death wish.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I'd moved beyond simply not caring. Maybe I really did want to die.

Maybe I just wanted Donovan to trust me enough that I could ask about Valerie Kunath, Crystal Harris, Amanda Blecher, and Monica Jensen. Maybe, if he knew his answer wouldn't affect the way I felt about him, he'd tell me everything.

When he parked beside Tilda's old Fiat, we sat in silence for several moments. The last time I'd been here, I'd kissed him in their old bedroom—a bedroom that hadn't been touched since she died. I had blasphemed on a sacred ground, and I didn't trust myself not to do it again.

I didn't want him to see my hesitation and wonder if I wasn't giving him a hundred percent, so I opened the door and climbed out. When I didn't hear the click of his door, I turned back to find him studying me through the passenger's window.

Did he care that I wasn't wearing her clothes? For a moment, back at my apartment, he'd spoken to me like I was me. Maisye. Did he mean it? Or was it a slip, or maybe an exception he made to give me a warning about Ciar?

I'd heard it, loud and clear. Stay away.

His sinister, slow chuckle. Of course I knew.

And the way his touch lit me up inside anyway.

His door opened, and when he straightened and stared at me over the hood of the car, I knew I was fucked. One way or the other.

"Come on." He circled the car, took my hand, and led me into the house. Once again, its size hit me. Single-family home.

Family.

He didn't seem to notice my hesitation, instead tugging me up the stairs. When he stopped in front of the locked door, I understood.

He wanted to show me what was in there.

I remembered the thumps I'd heard inside on my first day at the house. Was it a person? What if this really was some Jane Eyre shit, despite what Ciar had said?

Without a word, Donovan fiddled with his key ring until he found the right one. I held my breath as the door swung inward, giving way to the mystery that lay beyond. I gasped as he stepped to the side, revealing the piece of furniture standing against the wall.

A crib.

Entranced, I shuffled further inside, until I stood in the center of the room. Surrounded by letter blocks, stuffed animals, a bookshelf full of children's stories, and a Thomas the Tank Engine-themed mobile hanging from the ceiling, I felt that space deep inside me that wasn't me begin to stir. My throat closed, my vision blurred, my hearing dulled under the sound of my own heartbeats.

I stood in a nursery.

Tell him. Tell him what you can't do.

He scanned the walls, the crib, every book on the shelf. Then he finally turned to me with a sad smile.

"This was my dream," he murmured. "My hope. My future. It still is."

No. Stop. I wanted to cover my ears. I wanted to give myself to the piece of Tilda squirming in my gut, so I'd never have to remember his words as they tore me apart.

"You have to know that you have the power to make me the happiest man on earth, or to break me beyond recognition. I am in your hands. All of me."

I had no response. He wanted this. I'd known it from that night in Provincetown, but I'd tried to convince myself that he could move forward without it. That just because I looked like her, I'd be enough.

The room came crashing down around me, reminding me that I never would be.

My knees hit the carpet, my palms close behind. I heard my own sobs as if they echoed from the end of a long tunnel.

Tell him.

I can't.

To say it and watch his face fall, watch him stand up and walk away and leave me there, broken and used and unwanted? That was something I couldn't subject myself to again.

"Hey." His arms closed around my shoulders, sitting me back. "Hey, it's okay. What's wrong?"

"I want this, too." I hiccuped, wiping my face and my nose with the back of my hand. "More than anything. I want it."

I whispered the last three words into his shirt.

"I want it."

And I did. Because maybe if I had it, Mark wouldn't have left. If I had it, maybe Donovan would stay.

"I want it." But I can't have it.

I bit my lips to keep the truth inside as he held me tighter. I knew what he thought—that this was my admission, that I was offering myself to him, that I was saying yes—but I didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise.

It was Mark all over again.

"I need you. Please, I need you," I breathed, but it wasn't for him.

She listened. The little nugget of my soul that had never belonged to me grew, expanding like a bubble and taking on a life of its own.

"I'm here," Donovan said into my hair.

I'm here, Tilda echoed from within.

I didn't even try to follow his voice back. Hers was the one I knew.

▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁

"Maisye! Maisye! M—"

"You don't have to be so constant about it. If she heard you, she'll call."

I sat up, disoriented.

"You really hate that I'm using her fucking name that much, huh? You're the one she ran away from. Not that I blame her."

I ached everywhere. Turning my hands over, I found scrapes on my palms, blood and mud mingling into a dirty maroon.

"Shut up, or I swear to god—"

"You'll what? Beat me up?" The snort that followed was all too familiar.

Under the cover of prickly underbrush, I rotated my ankles, then bent my knees. All okay. I wasn't hurt, but everything from the waist down was hidden under the thorny bush, and my mind raced.

Had I passed out? Or was I simply laying here, searching the cloudy sky for a hint of stars? Awakening from Tilda's adventures always felt like this—a mishmash of What did I do? and Where am I?

"You'd be lucky if I only went that far."

"You're lucky I let you hit me." A pause. "Maisye!"

Ciar. That was Ciar. His name formed on my lips, but it died as my brain caught up.

Donovan was with him. The last few things I remembered crashed over me like a tidal wave, filling my lungs with acrid salt that stung just as much as the realization that Donovan wanted a child.

My throat closed with painful tightness. I thought back to the room—the mobile, the crib with its pastel pink blankets—

My breath caught. Pink. For a girl.

He wouldn't know it was a girl if it was theoretical. Was it just the blind wishful thinking of a man driven to the edges of sanity by his grief? Or was there more?

A wave of nausea hit me. I choked, rolled over, and vomited into the muddy grass beside me.

"Did you hear that?"

"Maisye!"

I barely heard the sounds of trampling brush over the ringing in my ears. A baby girl? What had happened to her? A miscarriage? Or was she out there somewhere, snatched away after her mother's death because as far as these people knew, Tillie Tucker had no family?

Was I an aunt?

Hands closed around my arms, pulling me up. A string of bile-tinged saliva dangled from my lip. Someone swiped it away, a soft, smooth finger. Donovan.

"Hey. Hey, it's okay. Come here."

I found my face pressed against his shirt, the smell of him blanketing me in thick, suffocating waves. I pulled away, groaning as my head swam again.

"What did you do?" Ciar asked as they sat me back down, Donovan using the hem of his shirt to swipe at the blood and dirt on my hands.

"I showed her the nursery," he said without looking up.

Ciar stared at him. "You're a fucking idiot."

Donovan stopped scrubbing at my palms and simply looked into my eyes. "You don't think she deserved the truth?"

"It's been what, like three weeks, tops?"

Donovan finally blinked, but he didn't avert his gaze from mine. "You wouldn't understand."

Ciar's eyes flicked from me to Donovan and back again. "Guess not."

Donovan let go of my hands, and they fell limply to my sides. They were as numb as my feet, pins and needles prickling painfully up my limbs. When they reached my heart, would I die?

I looked at Ciar. Would I care if I did?

"It's a girl," I blurted.

His mouth popped open, and as quickly as I could blink, he stood. I watched his boots as they turned and took a few steps away.

The unbearable urge to laugh in the face of it all overtook me, and a mad giggle escaped into the evening. It was a girl. A girl.

"You did this," Ciar snapped, his heels digging into the dirt as he pivoted toward Donovan. "Like you didn't learn the first time. She's not—"

Donovan hauled me to my feet, speaking in my ear. "Come on. Let's go home."

Home. I nodded numbly, even though I really wanted to ask what "home" meant. All I heard were the same three words in my head, over and over, like a bizarre celebration.

It's a girl!

"Up you go." He propelled me forward, my shoes snagging on roots and weeds until they turned into asphalt and the asphalt turned into his car. I looked around for Ciar, but he'd already vanished like a ghost. Had he ever really been there? Had I just imagined his abrupt reaction?

As I settled back into the cushy seat of the Tesla, the world stopped spinning, if only for a second. My head lolled to the left, and I stared at Donovan for a moment.

"What happened the first time?" I mumbled.

He hesitated, then started the car. "Nothing."

"Was it a girl?" I frowned, my brows furrowing. "Where is she?"

"It was"—he shook his head—"nothing. There was never a first time."

Before I could ask what he meant, he slid the car into drive and pulled into the street. I watched the setting sun backlight his profile in vibrant shades of orange until he finally took a deep breath.

"Did you really mean what you said earlier?" he asked. "You really want that?"

I nodded. I didn't even have to think twice. I had wanted it ever since the doctor had told Mark it was impossible.

"Really? You're sure?"

"Yes," I said, then noticed him staring at me instead of the road. It didn't matter—the car drove itself—but there was still something unsettling about his gaze. "What?"

"Nothing." He shook himself and put his hands back on the wheel, even though it wasn't necessary. "You just have no idea how happy I am to hear you say that."

I looked away guiltily, watching trees flash by out the window. I should tell him. He deserved to know now, before he got his hopes any higher.

But I couldn't.