He Said Losing My Emotions Was Better, Then He Begged Me to Feel Again novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Kitchen Table

Orson recites her nine years of feelings with dates; Martha says the last woman this happened to was Odile Draper.

I burned the toast at dawn and stood there watching it smoke.

The kitchen in my grandmother's farmhouse is small, and the smoke filled it fast.

I could smell it.

I could see it curling off the pan.

I simply did not mind.

"Miranda," Martha said from the table. "That's the third slice."

"I know."

"You're letting it burn on purpose?"

"I'm letting it burn because I don't care if it burns."

I picked the pan up by the metal handle.

It was hot, and the heat went straight into my palm and hurt.

I held on to it for a moment to see what would happen.

My hand hurt, and nothing else did.

There was no jump of fear and no thought of dropping it.

I set the pan in the sink and ran the tap over my palm.

"Pain works," I said. "The rest is gone. I tried being scared of the pan and I couldn't."

Martha looked at my hand and then at my face.

She is seventy-four, small and wiry, with white hair cut short and eyes that do not miss things.

"Sit," she said.

"I want to know what happened at the Stone."

"Sit down first."

I sat.

She poured me coffee, and I drank it, because it was hot and I knew it was good.

I tasted every part of it.

I just did not enjoy it.

Somebody knocked at the screen door.

It was not a strong knock.

Orson Draper stood on the porch with his jacket still on from the night before.

He had slept on our steps, and the dew had soaked the shoulders.

His eyes were swollen and his hands were not steady.

"Martha," he said, without looking at her. "I'm not here to take anything. I'm here to say something to Miranda."

"Then say it standing up," Martha said. "Don't cry on my floor."

"I'm trying not to."

I went and opened the door myself.

He looked at me, and the whole of his face moved.

"I thought you didn't feel anything for me," he said. "My mother said you looked at me like I was a column in a ledger."

"Did she."

"I believed her. That's why I thought it would cost you nothing."

His voice shook on the last word.

"But it's in me, Miranda. It came across the green at the moment the moon touched the Stone, and it's still coming."

"What is?"

"You."

He took a ragged breath.

"June fourteenth, nine years ago. You were eighteen. You stood outside the library for an hour because I was inside carrying boxes, and you didn't have the nerve to go in."

I said nothing.

"You bought a book you didn't want, just so you'd have an excuse to walk past the mill. You did that four times."

"I don't remember that."

"I do. I remember it from the inside."

He pressed the heel of his hand to his chest.

"The Christmas you cut me a piece of the pie and gave me the corner so I'd get the crust. You were so happy I took it. You went home and lay on your bed and counted how many words I'd said to you."

"Thirty-one," I said.

The number came out of my mouth before I knew I had it.

Orson stared at me.

"That's not mine," I said. "I don't have it anymore."

"Yes, it is," said Martha.

I turned.

She had not moved from the table.

Her hands were folded on the wood.

"Every word of that is yours," she said. "He just can't carry it for you."

"You knew this would happen."

"I knew what my grandmother told me, and I thought it was a tale for keeping girls home from the Stone."

She looked at Orson, and her face was hard.

"The tale says that when a man chooses a woman and lies, the Moon doesn't destroy what she feels. It moves it into him."

"Into him," I said.

"The tellers always said the woman goes numb and the man goes mad. I took it for a story to scare boys."

"It's not mad," Orson said. "It's every day of her. It's every day, and I never knew a single one."

He started to cry again, quietly, with his hand over his mouth.

I watched him.

I could see that he was in pain, and I could tell what kind.

It was mine.

He was crying my grief, and I was standing there dry.

"That's what I'd have felt," I said slowly. "Last night, on the green."

"Yes."

"And you're feeling it for me."

"I'm feeling all of it. I can't stop."

I turned to Martha.

"Who told him to do this?"

"Nobody tells a man like that to do anything," Martha said. "They tell him what he's allowed to want."

"Then I'll find out who did the telling, and I'll make them say it where the town can hear."

Martha stood up and put the kettle on, and her hands were not quite steady.

"Then you'd better hear this before you go anywhere," she said. "The last woman this happened to in Hollowmere was Odile Draper."

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