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"You're not going to cry, are you?"
Seeing Kevin's face in this room is like listening to a childhood lullaby mashed up with a favorite song, everything familiar but the combination strange and wrong. He's older, grittier, somehow simultaneously more and less confident. Perhaps more sure of the world around him and less sure of himself.
"It was always so fucking hard to get you to cry."
Eva remembers being a teenager. She was never like him--few are, thank everything there is to be thanked--but she remembers the frustration of knowing where you want to be and lacking the resources to get there, and she thinks some extreme of that must have been part of it.
He's not a teenager anymore.
"I tried, could you tell? Did you know, back then, when I was pushing so hard to break you? Or did you tell yourself you were imagining it?"
There's an empty wine glass on the table. That's unusual.
Not the wine glass. The emptiness.
"I bet Dad told you you were imagining it."
The blankets are scratchy around her thighs. She's been meaning to get new ones at the thrift store, in that vague way where she knows she never will. Strange, the subtle little ways she's always punishing herself without even realizing it.
"Did you ever cry when I wasn't there to see you? I used to picture you sobbing your eyes out after I went to bed. It helped me fall asleep."
Less strange, the ways he punishes her. Less subtle. Eva hitches her hips, hurrying him along, but it doesn't work. It never works. She doesn't know why she tries. Maybe to remind herself that she can't help it. It's easier if she knows she has no choice.
"It didn't work after I went to prison. Could never fall asleep, no matter what I thought about."
Eva couldn't either. Still can't.
"I didn't cry," she says.
He knows she's lying, she can tell by the curve of his lips, but she pretends she doesn't see. There's no point in giving him anything more than he's already taken.
"You're so good at this," he says, and she digs her fingers into the scratchy blanket and carefully measures out her blinks.