After a few more moments of holding her close, he let her go-and she looked up into his face. The eyes she found staring back at her bore such intense sadness that she felt like crying all over again . . . but then the sadness disappeared and he was just good old Weir.
"I meant what I said, LB," he continued. "It wasn't you. And it wasn't me, either. Though, at the time, I thought it was. We were only kids back then and we had zero to do with our family falling apart. The truth is always sadder and more complicated than we can imagine."
He pointed back to where Bit-na and the younger incarnation of himself had been standing, but now they were gone. In their place, Lizbeth and Weir's father stood, an angry expression on his face. He began pacing back and forth by the front door, brown hair sticking up in unkempt tufts, eyes red-rimmed and wild. Lizbeth turned to Weir, opening her mouth to ask him what was happening, but he just shook his head.
"Watch," he said. "We can only see the past. We can't hear it."
She returned her attention back to their father in time to see the front door open and Bit-na come into the room. She was wearing a raincoat, her dark hair drenched.
"She's pregnant with you," Weir continued, "but the bastard doesn't care. This happened while I was in Iceland with the Nordic Ice Queen."
Weir's mother was a blond former model who pretended she didn't have a child. He'd lived with her for one summer when he was a teenager and she'd spent the entire time ignoring him. Because she'd been so cold and uninterested in her own son, Weir and Lizbeth had labeled her the "Nordic Ice Queen."
Lizbeth watched as Bit-na reached out a hand, her long fingers searching for her husband's cheek. He turned away, his face bright with anger. She looked confused, not sure why he was upset with her. Though Lizbeth couldn't hear what they were saying, she watched Bit-na implore her husband to tell her what was wrong. Instead of answering her, he just started screaming.
"Don't look away."
Lizbeth couldn't have torn her eyes away from the scene had she tried. Bit-na, her belly as swollen as a watermelon, tried one final time to reach out to her husband-but it was a mistake.
Lizbeth watched in horror as her father punched her mother in the stomach.
Bit-na's face went pale, her mouth open in a silent O of pain. She fell backward, her hands clutching her distended belly protectively as she hit the floor. It was a hard fall and the side of her head connected with the wooden leg of the sectional couch. Blood blossomed from her scalp, staining the white leather of the couch a dark brown.
"No." Lizbeth clutched Weir's arm. Then, unable to keep looking, she buried her face in his chest, biting back the urge to scream.
"She was protecting you," he said, no emotion in his voice. "You almost died . . . and the idiot doctors told Bit-na that your cognitive problems stemmed from what happened to you in utero. This is what drove our parents apart and why our father was always so awful to you. He couldn't deal with his guilt."
When she'd collected herself enough to look again, the scene was gone, but her mother's blood still stained the white fabric of the couch. I hope that stain never went away, Lizbeth thought.
"He's just a man. Fallible and stupid. He fucked up and he lost everything. I know I should feel sorry for him," Weir added, "but it's hard, LB. Even here where it doesn't matter anymore."
Something about the words Weir chose bothered Lizbeth. When she really stopped to think about it, something about this whole experience was sitting wrong inside her.
"What do you mean?" Lizbeth said, her brain beginning to spin. "When you say that it doesn't matter anymore? What do you mean?"
She heard the plaintive whine in her voice.
"LB," Weir said, his voice laced with sadness.
Lizbeth tried to tamp down the nausea that was burning her throat, her thoughts all tangled together like a skein of yarn . . . and then she found the thread.
"No," she murmured. "No, I don't want to pull the thread."
She turned to face her older brother, understanding dawning in her eyes.
"Please, no," she continued, grabbing him by the arm and shaking him. "No, no, no . . ."
He didn't have to answer. His silence said it all. Her fingers caught the loose thread-the thread that would lead to the answer she already knew, but did not want-and she began to pull.
"You're here. In this place . . . the place between the dreamer and death. So that means . . ."
She couldn't bring herself to say the word.