No guest rooms.” I shake my head resolutely. “I want to be in a room room. A lived-in room.
I’ve always hated being looked at.
A room full of words that are nearly the truth but not quite, each note fluttering off the steam of its rose like a broken butterfly wing.
Stupid how the mind will try to distract itself.
His secret name, which belongs to me, and to him, and to no one else.
But the guilt goes even deeper than that. It, too, is dust: Layers and layers of it have accumulated. Because if it weren’t for me, Lena and Alex would never have been caught at all. I told on them. I was jealous. God forgive me, for I have sinned.