And the voice grows stronger and stronger, and it’s my voice this time and it’s asking a question: How does she know?

My first impulse is not to grab her or kiss her or yell at her. I simple want to touch her cheek, still flushed from the night's performance. I want to cut through the space that separates us, measured in feet-not miles, not continents, not years-and to take a callused finger to her face.

Every fiction has its base in fact.

In that twisted incestuous way of fate, Mia's a part of our history, and we're among the shards of her legacy.

I don't know who I am. Or maybe I do know who I am and I just don't want to be her anymore.

You were so busy trying to be my savior that you left me all alone.

But I'd do it again. I know that now. I'd make that promise a thousand times over and lose her a thousand times over to have heard her play last night or to see her in the morning sunlight. Or even without that. Just to know that she's somewhere out there. Alive.