Gallant

by V.E. Schwab

Home is a choice. Those four words sit alone on a page in her mother’s book, surrounded by so much white space they feel like a riddle. In truth, everything her mother wrote feels like a riddle, waiting to be solved.

How to exist in a world that does not want you. How to be a ghost in someone else’s home.

I am so happy. I am so scared. The two, it turns out, can walk together, hand in hand.

Stay with me. Stay with me. Stay with me. I would write the words a thousand times if they’d be strong enough to hold you here.

The case is too small, they’ll never fit, but she doesn’t care, she has lost enough and she is taking this. One by one the garments come free of their hangers, one by one they drop like flowers cut, until the wardrobe is empty, the floor strewn with cloth, and Olivia collapses, chest heaving, among the garden of her mother’s dresses, the bright yellows and bold reds and hazy blues, like summer blooms.