Chapter 8: The Video

Soren's POV

I watched the video forty times.

I kept count because it was the only thing in the house I could control.

The house was too quiet.

Linnea's music stand was still in the corner of the living room, with a page of Bach open on it.

I had not touched it.

I sat on the couch at one in the morning, with the laptop on my knees, and pressed play again.

The ballroom came up bright and gold.

The curtain caught.

The crowd ran.

At the edge of the frame, by the dessert table, a green dress went down under a metal beam, and a woman put a silver whistle between her teeth.

I knew that dress.

She had spent an hour in the bedroom that afternoon asking me if it was too plain.

I had said it was perfect.

I had been looking at my phone.

Partway through the clip, the whistle sounded.

Right after, the man on the screen turned his head.

He was me.

I watched him look into the smoke, and I watched his face go white.

I watched him take one step.

Then I watched him pick Astrid up off the floor and carry her away.

I stopped the video there.

I always stopped it there.

My ears were ringing, and it was not the fire.

Every time the whistle sounded, my chest went cold and heavy, and my ears filled with water.

I had not been on a dock in twenty-three years.

I did not understand it.

"You're doing it again," Astrid said from the doorway.

She wore one of my gray sweaters, because it was soft on her bandages.

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