Page 55 of Hunger

She doesn't move at the mention of Tammy. Her cheek stays against my chest. Her breath doesn't change.

I tell her about Craig.

She's still against me. She doesn't ask questions. She listens. I tell her what Craig had been thinking about her. What he'd been planning. What I'd seen in his memories when I touched the inside of his mind. I don't soften that either. She needs to know what I killed and why.

"You killed him," she says.

"Yes."

A long silence. Her hand moves on my chest. The pads of her fingers trace the scar she's been pressed against.

"Good," she says quietly.

I close my eyes.

I tell her about Dr. Reeves. The cardigan. The cats embroidered on the dish towel. The Brahms she remembered Jenny playing at nineteen. The conversation about the conservatory the year before everything fell apart.

She makes a sound against my chest. The stir of a memory she didn't know was still there being touched.

I tell her about her mother.

I tell her slowly. The Tudor house in Dundee. The kitchen at midnight, the cup of tea cooling in front of her mother, the way her mother turned at the sound of the door without screaming. I tell her about the conversation I had with her mother before I fed on her.Are you going to kill me. No. Are you going to kill anyone in this house. No. My husband is asleep upstairs.

I tell her about the memories.

I don't give them to her in order. I give her the pieces I think she needs to hear. The little Jenny in the yellow dress with the wooden spoon and the metal bowl, hitting them together, laughing. The father kneeling in front of the child with the quarter-violin, showing her how to lift the elbow. The Meditation from Thaïs in the auditorium, the father standing up first.

The conservatory letters in the drawer in his study.

She begins to cry against my chest.

The tears are soft. She doesn't make any sound. The warm wetness of them seeps into the cold of my skin and runs along the line of the long scar she's been pressed against. I draw my arm tighter around her. I lower my face into her hair. I hold her.

I tell her the last thing. The photograph on her mother's nightstand. Her father's silence about the photograph. The conversation her parents had in the dark six months ago.I should have stopped you with the letters. I know.

She's crying harder now. She presses into me with the whole weight of a body that's been holding something for a very long time and is finally letting it go.

I don't speak.

I hold her. I let her cry into my chest. The light in the room continues to dim. The window has gone gray. The day is leaving.

Eventually she goes still against me. Her breath slows. The crying is over. Her hand is curled against my sternum and her face is pressed into the side of my neck.

"Farkas."

"Yes."

"You did all of this."

"Yes."

"For me."

I can't speak. The wordfor youis in my mouth and it can't come out because if I open my mouth the love is going to come with it, and it's bigger than I am. I press my face into her hair instead.

She lifts her face.

She looks at me. The marks of the crying are on her cheeks. Her eyes are dark and wet. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.