Chapter 243
KATYA POV
Nonna’s room slled like chamomile and lavender like it always had.
The curtains were half drawn, the late afternoon light slipping in softly. Everything in here moved at a slower pace—ti included.
The armchair by the window, the crocheted throw folded just so, the little porcelain dish on the bedside table that held nothing important and yet was never empty.
Safe things. Familiar things. I sat on the edge of the bed with my hands folded in my lap because I didn’t know what else to do with them.
They wouldn’t stop trembling. "Drink," Nonna said gently, pressing a warm cup into my fingers before I could protest.
Her voice was steady. It always was. Even when the world outside this room cracked open, Nonna spoke like nothing sharp was allowed to pass her lips.
I nodded and took the cup. The ceramic was warm enough to sting slightly. I welcod it. Pain that made sense was easier to hold onto.
I stared down into the tea instead of at her. Watching the steam curl upward felt safer than eting her eyes.
"I’m sorry," I said quietly. The words slipped out on instinct, like they always did when sothing went wrong.
When I went wrong.
Nonna made a small sound, not quite a sigh, not quite a scold. She sat beside and covered my hands with hers, steadying the cup, steadying .
"You have nothing to apologize for," she said. I almost laughed. Almost. My chest felt tight, like sothing had been wrapped around my ribs and pulled too hard.
Every ti I inhaled, the mory followed it, Adelasia body. Lifeless eyes. The kitchen. The voices. That sentence. Lila
I didn’t kill her.
I hadn’t even realized I’d said it until it was already out in the open, hanging between and Roo like a confession I didn’t rember making.
I swallowed and took a careful sip of the tea. It tasted faintly sweet, faintly bitter. Balanced. Everything I wasn’t.
"I didn’t an to cause trouble," I murmured. "I just... I thought I could get so water and so ti with Miss Stella."
Thinking back at Miss Stella reaction to made my thoughts go high wire again. Nonna’s hand tightened slightly over mine. Just enough for to notice.
"This house," she said slowly, choosing her words the way she always did, "has too many mouths and not enough sense."
I shook my head, a reflex. "It wasn’t like that. I..." My voice faltered. Was I trying to defend Lila. I pressed my lips together, trying to keep the rest in. "I shouldn’t have gone in there."
There it was. The familiar turn inward. The quiet rewriting of events until they bent around .
Nonna was silent for a mont. Then she reached out and tipped my chin up gently with one finger, forcing to look at her.
Her eyes were sharp despite her age. Not unkind. Just very, very aware. "Katya," she said, softly but firmly. "Tell what was said to you."
My stomach dropped. The room felt smaller suddenly. The walls closer. The air heavier. I looked away again, shaking my head.
"It doesn’t matter," I whispered. It mattered. I knew it mattered the mont the words left my mouth.
Nonna’s thumb paused against my knuckles.
"It matters," she said quietly, "because you’re talking about leaving." The word settled heavy between us.
Leaving.
I inhaled softly, a small, careful breath, and sniffed the tears back before they could spill. I nodded once, because nodding was easier than speaking, and let my gaze drift to the far wall where the light thinned into shadow.
Inside my head, everything unraveled.
Doesn’t she know? The thought rose uninvited, sharp enough to make my chest ache.
Doesn’t she know Adelasia is dead?
I didn’t say it. I didn’t even look at Nonna when it crossed my mind. I just sat there, hands clenched around the cup, feeling the question echo again and again like it was trying to find a way out.
Adelasia had been her family.
Blood, or close enough that it should have mattered the sa way. Loud enough that the house should still be shaking from it.
Heavy enough that soone like Nonna—who noticed everything—should have said sothing.
But she hadn’t. Not once. No mourning. No anger. No quiet candle lit in the corner of a room.
Nothing. The thought twisted, ugly and unkind, and I hated myself for it even as it took root.
Did she care? Did anyone? My throat tightened. Since Adelasia died, the house had gone on breathing. Eating. Speaking in low voices behind closed doors. Life continued, smooth and uninterrupted, like a river that barely noticed the stone thrown into it.
And I had noticed. I had noticed because I couldn’t forget her eyes. Lifeless. Open. Accusing without aning to be.
The cup trembled in my hands again, and this ti Nonna noticed.
She set her own hand over mine more firmly, grounding, present. Real.
"You are not soone who runs," she said, her voice gentle but sure. "So when you say you want to leave, I know it is because sothing has frightened you."
Frightened?
That wasn’t the right word.
Ashad. Cornered. Pulled backward into a mory I hadn’t been strong enough to bury properly.
"I don’t belong here," I said instead, because that felt safer. Less specific. Less dangerous. Nonna humd encouraging to elaborate but there was nothing to explain.
She leaned closer, her presence solid, unyielding. "Katya," she said, firr now. "Look at ."
I forced myself to.
Her gaze searched my face—not impatient, not demanding. Just steady. Like she was reading sothing written beneath my skin.
The tears burned behind my eyes asI shook my head again, smaller this ti. "I don’t want to stay sowhere I’m... blad," I whispered. "I don’t want to be looked at like that."
Like how Miss Stella looked at . Nonna’s jaw set.
"Blad for what?" she asked. My heart hamred.
The answer pressed against my ribs, desperate to escape, but fear wrapped around it tight. Fear of saying it wrong. Fear of saying it at all. Fear that once spoken, it would beco truth.
I hugged the cup closer to my chest, as if it could shield .
"I just want to go sowhere quiet," I said finally. "Sowhere I don’t remind people of things they’d rather forget."
Nonna was about to speak. I saw it in the way her lips parted, in the breath she drew like she had finally decided which truth to hand and which to keep.
A sound cut through the room before she could. A scream—raw, sharp, wrong—ripped down the corridor outside, close enough that it didn’t echo. It broke.
I barely had ti to register it before the door slamd open so hard it struck the wall, the impact rattling the porcelain dish on the bedside table.
Sothing—soone—was shoved inside. The body hit the floor with a dull, heavy thud and slid forward on the polished wood, montum carrying it straight into my knees.
I gasped and jerked back instinctively, the cup slipping from my hands as my body recoiled. Tea splashed uselessly across the bedspread, warmth blooming where it soaked in, but I didn’t feel it.
All I could see was the face that tipped upward from the floor.
Lila.
Her cheek was sared dark, blood drying unevenly along her jaw. One eye was already swelling shut, the other glassy and unfocused as it struggled to find mine.
Her mouth opened, a soundless attempt at words that never ca.
I froze.
††
Well well well lol
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