Total pages in book: 42
Estimated words: 38856 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38856 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 130(@300wpm)
I knew I'd been made. Known and categorized. I should have been scared, but instead, I felt a thrill run through me. I was on their radar now.
I turn back to face Eleanor's ghost, her presence as unwelcome now as it was the past. Even back then, she was hunting me. Following me. Watching me. Not just with Savannah, but everywhere.
She showed up outside the parts store in Terry one afternoon. I was loading boxes into the back of the delivery truck when I spotted her across the street. Camera in hand, as always. But she wasn't taking pictures then. She was waiting for me.
When my shift ended, she approached me in the parking lot. Pulled an envelope from her bag and handed it to me without a word.
Inside was a photograph. Me and Savannah in the silo. Our first kiss. Me sixteen, her fourteen. Her hands on my face, my fingers tangled in her hair. The moment captured in perfect, terrible detail.
"Savannah will love you forever," Eleanor said, her voice soft but her eyes hard. "No matter who she marries. Take solace in that."
The meaning was clear. Savannah is not yours. Will never be yours. You can have her heart, but not her life.
I was so angry I couldn't speak. How did she get that picture?
Later, I would go check the silo for cameras, but she'd gotten them out. That was her only chance to get us like that. Inside the silo doin' what we do.
And she knew it.
She burned her bridge to give me that photo.
Why? I never knew.
"You look angry," ghost-Eleanor says now, watching me remember. "You were angry then, too."
"You invaded something private," I say, the words coming out rough. "Something that wasn't yours to see."
Eleanor smiles, that same cold smile I remember. "Nothing is private, Legion. Not in this world. Not with my daughter."
I stare at Eleanor's ghost, my chest rising and falling too fast. Every memory of her, every secret exchange between us, pulses through my mind.
"You had no right," I tell her. "No fucking right to any of it."
Eleanor tilts her head, studying me like I'm something behind glass. Just like she always did. "To what, exactly?"
"To photograph us in the silo. To follow me. To make me—" I stop, the words tangling in my mouth.
"Make you what?" Her smile spreads slow, knowing. "Love me?"
The accusation hangs between us. I want to deny it, but the truth is worse than whatever she thinks. She was there when no one else was. She showed up. My own mother was drowning in her own mind half the time, and when she wasn't, she was working double shifts or dealing with Deacon's bullshit.
"You were a predator," I say finally. "You hunted me."
"And you let me catch you." Her voice stays even. "Over and over again."
I shake my head, but the denial feels hollow. "I was a kid."
"You were never just a kid, Legion. You were always more." She steps closer, and I can almost smell her perfume—something expensive, with notes of roses. "You came to me when I called. You posed when I asked. You took the money I offered."
"I needed that money."
"Did you need the attention, too?" She arches an eyebrow. "The praise? The way I looked at you like you were worth something?"
This question hits. I did need the attention. Craved it, even. In a world where I was invisible at best and a problem at worst, Eleanor saw me.
Like… really saw me. In a way no one else ever did, through the lens of a camera.
"You made me love you," I say, the words burning my throat.
She laughs, the sound echoing in the empty silo. "I didn't make you do anything, Legion. You just knew it was real. So you figured… why not? Why not do more than tolerate the woman who really raised you. Why not love her back."
The worst part is, she's right. I knew what she wanted, what she was doing. And I let her do it. Because she was there. Because she gave a damn when no one else did.
"You know why I did it. You've known for fourteen years, Legion."
Eleanor's ghost stands before me in this strange memory-silo, her smile cold and knowing. She waits for me to speak, like she always did—setting the trap, then watching me step into it.
"You made a deal with me," she says finally. "When you were seventeen."
I didn't want to remember this. Any of it. But the memory rises anyway, thick and choking.
Eleanor found me at work one day. She waited in her Range Rover across from the garage, engine running. I pretended not to see her at first. But she didn't leave. Just sat there, patient as death.
When my shift ended, I walked over. Not because I wanted to. Because I knew she wouldn't go away until I did.