Gallant

by V.E. Schwab

“She is Grace’s,” says Hannah, and the idea snags inside Olivia, the thought that she could be somebody’s, even if they are not here.

She has never had a family, and now she has a tree.

“Put the right words into the world,” he says, “never know what you’ll catch.”

But it is a heavy kind of silence, the one people use when they know the answer to something but can’t decide if they should tell it.

Perhaps it is some primal need to face her fate, the same force that drives a girl to look beneath her bed, the knowledge that what you can’t see is always worse than what you can.

When people see tears, they stop listening to your hands or your words or anything else you have to say. And it doesn’t matter if the tears are angry or sad, frightened or frustrated. All they see is a girl crying.

“I will be right here,” he says. “When you come back.” All her life, Olivia has wondered what it would feel like to have a family. And now she knows. It feels like this.