The Valley and the Flood by Rebecca Mahoney (10 best books of all time TXT) 📗

Flora, to us both, like my fingers are locked at the end of a ledge, like my words might keep us from falling.

I don’t know why I expected to sound insincere. Like I was faking that empathy, or that I wasn’t capable of it anymore. Even after everything that’s happened with Flora, I still feel it now.

The Flood doesn’t wait for my prompt this time—we move to the next scene on their own, from one Summer bedroom to the next. To a moment just four nights ago.

Except this time, the scene flips. I’m not watching myself do it. I’m sitting here, on the bed with Flora, right here in the memory.

At first, I freeze. She watches me, curious and intent. And I realize I need to say my lines.

“I, um,” I say. I don’t have to think back to the words. They’re right there waiting for me. “We. My therapist and I, I guess. We think it’s something like . . . post-traumatic stress disorder.”

Flora’s face freezes. That, at least, is like I remember. What I don’t remember is hedging so much, circling those four letters, trying to soften the blow. In my memory, I just said it.

“What?” Flora’s breathless, like I’ve punched her.

“It’s really not that bad,” I say, quickly. I’m not sure if it’s me feeling this or me from four nights ago feeling this, or if we’re both on the same page here, just desperate to make her hear us. “It sounds more dramatic than it actually is.”

I said it to make her feel better. But it wasn’t completely untrue. That’s what Maurice kept trying to say. That I could go through hell and it didn’t mean I was broken.

“Why did I tell you?” I whisper to the image of Flora. The memory doesn’t react. “When Maurice told me to tell someone, why did I decide it had to be you?”

My little brother, Sammy, is the one who texts me composition practice every day, trying to turn the sound of my phone into something good again. My stepfather, Dan, is the one who tries to make sure I drive alone as little as possible, who rests his hand on my shoulder on tight curves. Mom is the one who smoothed her hand over my cheek just two weeks ago and asked, Rosie, you know if there’s ever anything . . .

“All this,” I say, ending my thought out loud, “and I told you? You were always going to react like this. You always did with Gaby. Did I think you’d understand because you lost her, too? Or did I—”

I choke on the next words. But I know what I was going to say. Did I hope you’d set aside your own feelings and just comfort me? Just like I did for you, that morning we buried her? Probably that. Probably both.

“You’re grieving, sweetheart,” Flora says, the memory uninterrupted. “Of course you should talk to someone if you need it. But what you’re talking about—that’s a serious condition. That’s . . .”

This time, I don’t just finish her sentence in my head. I say it out loud, faintly. “Dangerous.”

And then the memory goes off script.

“Oh—” Flora’s face freezes. The way it would have, I think, had we done this in reality. “No—no, sweetheart, that’s not what I meant.”

She smiles, anxiously, down at me. Looking at her, I’m reasonably sure of two things. That it was exactly what she meant. And that the way she’s looking at me isn’t fear. More like how she looked at me later that evening, standing side by side with Nick. Please just be okay with this.

And I think I’m finally sure of the answer I gave the Flood that night. That the two of us had this danger, this damage that needed to be contained. For me, that answer meant that the PTSD had changed me in ways that I couldn’t take back. For the Flood, it meant that all the fear and pain they’d taken in had changed them, too. That they needed to hold it all in, or it would overtake everything, just like the ocean they once were overtook this desert. That they were destruction once, and they might be destruction again. And if we couldn’t control the things that brought us here, or how we felt about them, then maybe we couldn’t control ourselves.

It might have been the wrong answer.

“Keep going.” I breathe. There’s only one memory that’ll tell us, one way or the other.

And when the world twists into that familiar shape, I don’t look at the road, or the tree—I look across the ditch, across the battered car, and lock eyes with Nick Lansbury. “Not here,” I say. “I’ve spent enough time here.”

Nick’s gaze is so blank, so measured, that I know it has to be the Flood looking at me through his eyes. Nick’s head tilts, politely curious.

“Go on. It’s okay,” I say. “You know where I want to go.”

I hold the Flood’s stare as Sutton Avenue brightens and fades. The yellow light of the Summers’ kitchen pops against the evening dark through the line of windows on our right side. It’s like the world beyond has ceased to exist.

The only way I can make myself reach toward the counter is if I don’t look at it. I don’t close my fingers until the handle fits against my flat palm. I don’t lift the knife until I gently map out the blade with the pad of my index finger, my touch too light to break skin.

Nick’s eyes get a little brighter as, for the first time, I see the Flood’s gaze light up with interest.

My arm shakes, almost too hard to keep my grip as I lift the knife.

This isn’t the Summers’ kitchen, and the figure opposite me isn’t Nick Lansbury. What I do here changes nothing. But those facts fall away, bit by bit, the longer I look at him. The reason Gaby no longer exists. The reason for everything.

I could do whatever I want, couldn’t I? I could do whatever I want, and