Chapter 220: …I Asked My ——….

LOUISE’S POV

Louise remembers them.

She remembers all of them.

She had not forgotten their faces. She had simply stopped looking at them in her mind. She had learned to call cruelty strength, obedience loyalty, and herself a survivor whenever she did something terrible and needed a reason to keep going.

The shadows begin to move. The faces gather around her. Their mouths open, and their voices rise.

"You knew."

"You saw what happened."

"You could have stopped."

"You laughed at me."

"You took everything."

"You didn’t care."

Louise clamps her hands over her ears. "Stop."

The voices grow louder.

"You knew what she was doing."

"You helped her."

"You watched."

"You let it happen."

"Stop!" She squeezes her eyes shut.

The blackness surges around her legs. Hands seem to reach from it, catching at her ankles and wrists, dragging her downward. The valley fills with cries and broken words, with all the pain she has spent years refusing to acknowledge.

She tries to pull free, but she cannot. Her little feet slide against the ground. She looks up at Mateo. He is still holding her.

He has not let go.

"Help me!" The cry escapes her before she can stop it. "Mateo, please!"

He gathers her against his chest, one hand cradling the back of her head. "I have you."

"They’re right!" Louise sobs against him. "They’re right about me!"

The words pour out of her in broken pieces. "I did it. I hurt them. I knew what I was doing. I knew, and I still did it."

Her shoulders shake. "I was horrible." She can barely breathe. "I was so horrible."

The faces continue to watch her. She wants to disappear. She wants to crawl beneath the earth and hide where no one can look at her again.

Most of all, she wants Mateo to let go because if he keeps holding her, she will have to look at him. She will have to see the disappointment in his eyes.

She will have to watch the moment he realizes that the little girl he loved has become someone he cannot love anymore.

Louise would rather be swallowed by the valley. She would rather let the darkness take her. At least then she would not have to see him turn away.

But Mateo does not turn away.

He begins to speak.

At first, she cannot understand him. His voice is low, almost lost beneath the cries surrounding them. He is murmuring something against her hair, his hand moving slowly over her back.

The rhythm is familiar, steady and patient, the same rhythm that once filled their tiny apartment on quiet mornings.

Louise tries to listen, but the voices around her keep screaming. Mateo continues.

His voice does not rise to compete with them. He does not argue with the faces or tell them that they are wrong. He simply keeps speaking, and slowly, the words begin to reach her.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."

Louise stops struggling.

The scripture. His favorite scripture.

She remembers the mornings when she would sit at the kitchen table with her legs swinging beneath the chair while Mateo stood by the stove, making pancakes.

He would have his Bible open beside him. Sometimes he would read while he cooked, pausing to turn a pancake or reach for the honey.

Sometimes he would recite the verse from memory, his voice filling the little kitchen while sunlight crept through the thin curtains.

She used to complain that he was always reading. He would laugh and tell her that a person needed something steady to hold on to when the world became unkind.

She had never understood. Not then. She had only known that his voice made the mornings feel safe.

Now, in this valley, with the cries of the people she has hurt surrounding her, she hears that same voice.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."

Mateo says it again. And again.

He keeps chanting the words, his voice calm and firm. The hands gripping Louise begin to loosen, and the blackness around her ankles shifts. The pressure against her chest eases just enough for her to draw a breath.

Louise stares at him.

He is still holding her. His Bible rests against his side, its worn cover pressed beneath his arm. He looks like the man who used to sit beside her when she had nightmares, the man who would tell her that she did not have to be brave every moment of the day, the man who had once promised to stay beside her until she fell asleep.

Louise’s lips begin to move. At first, no sound comes out. Then she whispers, "I’m sorry."

Mateo continues chanting.

"I’m sorry." Her voice shakes. "I’m sorry."

The words fall from her mouth like small, broken things. She does not know who she is apologizing to anymore. The girl in the shadows, the people she has hurt, Mateo, or herself. Perhaps all of them.

"I’m sorry." She keeps repeating it.

The black tears continue to fall, but something inside her begins to loosen. The pressure in her throat eases. Her chest still hurts, but she can breathe.

Mateo draws back enough to look at her. His eyes are red, his cheeks wet. He looks as though he has been crying for a very long time.

Yet he smiles at her, not because he thinks she has done nothing wrong, and not because he does not understand the pain surrounding them. He smiles because he is looking at her.

His little flower.

The child he loved.

The daughter he never stopped carrying in his heart.

Louise looks down at herself. She is still small. Her hands are still covered in blackness, and the faces are still there, watching her from the slopes of the valley. Nothing has been erased. Nothing has been made right.

But Mateo is holding her hand.

And for the first time, she realizes that she does not have to face what she has done by herself. The thought is so painful that she starts crying again.

Mateo reaches down and takes her hand. His fingers close around hers. "Come, my little flower."

He pulls her gently to her feet. Louise stumbles, and he steadies her.

She looks at him, confused. "Where are we going?"