liv’s Reviews > Antenora > Status Update

“There is a universe where Nora and I are happy. I know this to be true. There is a life where she didn’t vanish. I don’t know what comes next for me, but I know that. And I keep that in a sweet little jar in the back of my mind, right next to the feeling of her lips on my own, and I take it out when I need it most.”

à la even though I knew the end

“There’s no me without you,” I echoed back, because it felt truer than the version she had said.

“I think Nora felt trapped more than anything else. I think she maybe made a bad choice or two because she felt like she had to, and then all of a sudden she was a bad person, and bad people get bad consequences, whether they actually deserve them or not.”

The silence of the crowd, the wash of the flames. Nora’s eyes on me—not pleading, not sad. Satisfied. Like she had long been ready for this sort of thing and had just been waiting for someone to finally light the flame.

I wondered how far one person had to go to be considered past the reach of God’s grace. And I wondered who, exactly, had the authority to determine such a thing.

I spent a solid hour just staring at the curve of her hair on my pillow, wishing that this could be my eternity.

If you’d asked her, she would have told you that she hardly ever cried, but I know she was crying that night. Even if I couldn’t see it, even if she wouldn’t admit it, I could feel the gentle shaking of her body.

“I think this is it.” The words felt heavy, like an admission. “I don’t think I’m making it out of this one.”

Seeing Nora was an exercise in instinct more than rationality, and she was slipping through my window before I remembered that she was a murderer, that the devil was in her, that there were a thousand other reasons not to hold her close or think about kissing her again. I had to hold myself back from hugging her, but even then it was not because it might’ve been dangerous for me to do so.”