Chapter 5
908 Words
The Weight of a Dead Name*
The drive home was quiet.
Conor didn't say anything. I didn't say anything either. I just looked out the window and watched the cemetery get smaller and smaller until it disappeared completely.
My grave was back there.
I had just watched people cry over my name on a stone. I had stood there in someone else's shoes, in someone else's dress, in someone else's *face*, and watched them say goodbye to me.
I didn't cry. I couldn't. Not there.
Conor's hand moved from the steering wheel. It stopped just near my hand on my lap. He didn't touch me. Just stayed close. Like he wasn't sure if I needed comfort or if I would pull away.
I stared at the road and said nothing.
---
The mansion was cold when we got back.
Someone had left the television on.
I walked in and dropped my bag on the chair. I was so tired. The kind of tired that lives in your bones, not just your body. I wanted to sit down and close my eyes and wake up as myself again.
Then I heard it.
*"...Enid Silverstone, twenty-three years old, was found dead at her own birthday party late Saturday evening. Investigators say the case is still open..."*
I froze.
There was my face on the screen. A photo of me. Smiling. Hair done. Eyes bright. I remembered that photo. It was taken at a friend's dinner last summer. I had been happy that night.
The woman on the screen looked so alive.
*That's me,* I thought. *That's actually me.*
The reporter kept talking. Words like *investigation* and *suspicious* and *tragedy.* My name again and again like it meant nothing. Like I was just a story people would forget by morning.
I stood in the middle of Isla's big, pretty living room and watched my own obituary play on the evening news.
---
I don't remember walking to the bathroom.
I just remember closing the door. Turning the lock. Looking up at the mirror.
Isla's face looked back at me.
Brown eyes. Soft skin. A mouth I had never learned to smile with properly. Pretty in a way that felt like a costume.
*This isn't me.*
I gripped the sink hard. My hands were shaking. I hadn't let them shake all day. Not at the burial. Not in the car. Not when people hugged me and cried and called me Isla and told me how glad they were I was alive.
I had held it all in because I had to.
But now the door was locked and nobody could see me.
So I cried.
Quietly. The kind of crying where you press your lips together and try to make no sound at all. I cried for my name on that stone. I cried for my face on that screen. I cried because somewhere out there the person who killed me was walking around free and warm and probably sleeping just fine.
And I was here.
Alive in a body that wasn't mine.
I cried until there was nothing left.
---
I didn't hear the door open.
I don't know how he got in. Maybe I forgot to lock it properly. Maybe Conor had a key to everything in this house. That felt like something he would have.
He didn't say anything at first.
He just stood behind me. Quiet and still. So we were both looking at the same mirror. His face above my borrowed one. Both of us reflected in the glass like a painting that didn't quite make sense.
Then he said, very softly, *"You held it together today."*
Not *are you okay.* Not *I'm sorry.* Just that. Like he understood exactly what it had cost me to stand at my own grave and not fall apart.
I laughed. It came out small and tired and a little broken.
*"I watched them bury me, Conor,"* I said.
It was the first time I had used his name out loud.
I felt him go still behind me when I said it.
Neither of us moved for a moment.
Then he stepped back and the space between us came back and I turned away from the mirror because I was done looking at a face I didn't recognize.
---
The hallway was dim when I finally came out.
He was still there. Leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, like he had been waiting. Like he wasn't sure I would come out at all.
I stopped walking when I saw him.
There was something I needed to know. Something that had been sitting in my chest all day, quiet and heavy like a stone.
*"Did you love her?"* I asked. *"Isla?"*
He looked at me for a long time.
*"Yes,"* he said.
Just that. One word. No explaining. No softening it.
I nodded. I don't know why. It wasn't a surprise. But hearing it out loud did something strange to me. Made the floor feel a little less solid.
*"Okay,"* I said quietly.
I went into the room. I closed the door behind me.
I lay down on Isla's bed and stared up at Isla's ceiling in Isla's body and thought about my name on a stone and my face on a screen and a man in the hallway who loved someone I was pretending to be.
Outside, somewhere in the city, my killer was sleeping.
I closed my eyes.
- Writer
