“You’re right. That’s not possible.”

“Okay,” she says, nodding her head again, “okay, that makes sense too.”

We sat in silence, hearing only the sound of Maggie’s cartoons behind the closed bedroom door. She was the only one in this who couldn’t be spared. Either way she lost someone.

Glen.

Ashley.

Both.

“I can’t kill you because I have a niece in there who loves you, regardless of your fucked up morals.”

“So…”

“So I walk away.”

“What?”

There was nothing I could do. There was nothing that could be achieved as long as I was still working within the circumstances that had been created.

It would bring me no release to see her trapped.

No more life to take hers.

No more freedom to see her caged.

She had taken it upon herself to avenge those who aided in my pain and now had to live with the ghosts that could’ve been mine. She would lose her daughter regardless. Maybe to my brother. Maybe to the lies that would later be questioned.

Her hands were tied.

I leaned over, closer to her than I had been in months. She felt the same and smelled the same, but wasn’t. I loosened the rope that kept her at my mercy while I made my final decision. Though she had allowed it without a fight. I ignored her eyes, but could feel them on my neck and face.

“What now?” she whispered, and I could feel her desperate breath as it reached my cheek.

“It’s not my job to decide your fate. I don’t want it. And a lot of this had been blamed on other people. Aiden. Rebecca. Now it’s your turn.”

I finished with the rope and placed it beside her.

“My turn.”

“It’s your turn to decide what happens next. But Ashley, look,” I said, still positioned next to her, “she needs him. You don’t want her to find out on her own, because you know she will.”

“I know.”

“There’s still a chance that she would understand if you…”

“I know.”

“Then I guess there’s nothing else to say.”

And there wasn’t. We were absolutely done. The words that could repair us had yet to be invented and defined. But I could see her actively pursuing them anyway, her mouth opening but sound failing her again and again.