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Concetta stares at the letter in her hand with faraway eyes and a blank face. She’d recognized the handwriting on the envelope instantly. The envelope itself is large, heavy and crisp, and it somehow made its way here without any return postage.
Her roommate waves a hand in front of her face and tugs her out of the mailroom, asking her who on earth sent it and why she’s acting so strangely about it.
Concetta absently fingers the yellow scarf tied to her wrist.
“É da ….un’amica.”
_________
The late afternoon sun filters through her window as Concetta sits motionless on her bed. She hasn’t read the letter yet, but she’s been holding it for a while. Everything has slowed down to a crawl, and she feels nauseous, knowing the kind of hand that wrote this.
Abigail left over two years ago, completely without warning. Concetta remembers waking to an empty apartment and throwing up in Abigail’s bathroom, feeling confused and scared and like there was something crucial she should remember but could not for the life of her.
She’d walked home feeling like monsters were watching her.
Something inside her had warned to keep this to herself, so she did, surprisingly. Her parents knew everything, but for some reason they could not know this thing. Concetta spun a lie about some sort of family emergency. Abigail had to fly back to the states with her fathers for a little while.
In the week that had followed Concetta could barely function. She’d tried calling Abigail, almost constantly at first. No one ever answered and on the third day Concetta had thrown her phone in anger, broke down crying in an alley and sat there for hours, staring at the sliver of sky between the rooftops as the sun set and the world grew dark. She could remember Abigail’s voice before blacking out but she couldn’t remember what it had said, though she knew straight down to her bones it’d been something truly awful. Concetta had told her parents her phone had gotten run over by a motorcycle.
She’d stopped calling every day during week three, because a news station said something about I Mostri, and Concetta had felt an awful shiver down her spine at the name. She thought of Abigail but couldn’t reason why. Or maybe she didn’t want to know the reason.
The funny thing about lost memories is that inklings and pieces of them float around and sometimes they can be caught and pieced together, whether they’re wanted or not. This memory had not been wanted, but it clawed its way back anyway. Concetta called one last time and was met with a disconnected number, before she’d sat down in the middle of her kitchen and stared blankly ahead of her. The word escape had filtered through from the news and when Concetta looked down at her hands she saw blood.
She sees the same thing now, looking at this letter. She doesn’t want to read it. She has to read it. Abigail ruined some integral part of her and Concetta wants to know why.
She steels herself and wipes tears from her eyes, looks down at the neat writing and tries not to cry.
___________
Concetta,
I’m not really sure how to start this letter. I’m not even sure you’re going to read it. And I don’t want to fill it up with meaningless small-talk. It’s superficial. All the same I hope university is going well. You were always pretty smart in school. I’m hoping to go someday, too, when I can. Hannibal always says education is key no matter what kind of life you lead.
My life is … messy in a way. But clean in others. I’m basically no one. Not anymore. I’m like a ghost.
It’s strange, being a ghost. I’m not tied to anything. For once in my life I can do whatever the hell I want. No one knows I’m alive, and they’re not looking for me. I’m with my family because I want to be. I don’t have to follow anyone’s wishes but my own.
Before I found them I wasn’t my own person. I couldn’t be. My real dad used me like a puppet. He loved me as best he could but everything was fake and I hated who I was. And then he died, and then I almost died, and then everyone thought I died, and now here we are. I’m happy and I’m a ghost.
You probably don’t have any idea what I’m talking about. I used to live in Minnesota, if that helps.
Either way, no one really sees me. But you see me now, don’t you? It’s what I wanted. You probably didn’t want it and I’m sorry for hurting you. I was selfish when I told you and it’s probably screwed with your head and I’m so, so sorry, because I know what that feels like, but I can’t make myself regret it. You were, and are, my closest friend. Everything felt real around you and I’d never had that with someone my age. You saw through all my cracks and loved the best parts of me. The human parts. I couldn’t just leave without showing you what I really am and why it was time for us to go. I don’t expect you to understand all of me. You aren’t like me. But I hope you can understand how special you are to me, enough that I wanted to be honest with you. You gave me love and trust and I wanted to give that back. I don’t know how much of that you have left for me, but I hope there’s some.
You’ve probably worked out what you were eating at the party. Or who. I saw the news a few weeks after we left. Everyone was piecing it together. It disgusts them, and it probably disgusts you. I want to say it used to disgust me, it might make you feel better somehow, but it never really did. I used to tell myself it did but that was a lie. I used to say I was afraid of all of this, but the only thing I was ever really afraid of was getting caught. I always tried to sugar coat myself because I was ashamed of what people would think of me. I'm not ashamed anymore, and I know you think of me as a monster. It’s ok, because I am. It took me a while to accept that. It’s probably taken you a while too.
You probably won’t hear from me for a while, and you probably won’t see me again, as much as I would love to see you. Not sure you would, though. I’m really not sure how welcome any of this is going to be.
I hope you still think of me, though. I still think of you. I always will. I miss you.
Love,
Abigail
P.S. Maggie is doing great. We have another dog now, too. His name is Milo, he’s 2 years old, and he jumps. A lot. I’m not sure how many strays Will can get away with having, but so far Hannibal fails miserably at saying no to him.
____________
Concetta’s stomach turns and tears are streaming down her face. She moves to rip the letter to pieces but can’t, drops it to the floor instead and covers her mouth with her hand to quiet her cries. She knows what Abigail is, she’s known for years now, but somehow reading it in Abigail’s own words makes it more real than Concetta ever wanted it to be. Her old anger and betrayal resurfaces and she wishes Abigail had just left her alone, because it would have made things so much easier.
But nothing is ever easy or comfortable, because there is something almost happy sitting deep inside and it makes Concetta’s head spin. She wants to tear it out because no truly good person can miss a murderer. She shouldn’t be happy that Abigail is alive, and she shouldn’t recognize that Abigail telling the truth was the largest gesture of friendship anyone has ever given her.
She can’t fault Abigail for being exactly who she is. Concetta had always told her to do so, anyway.
She reaches down and picks the crumpled letter off the floor. She can’t keep this. She almost wants to. She hates herself for that but at the same time recognizes it’s not her fault either. None of this is.
The envelope gets upended in her hand and a piece of cardstock falls out into her lap. Concetta turns it over and feels something sprout in her chest, warmth and grief twisted together like a garden covered in tar.
It’s a photograph. Abigail had taken it, probably using her cell phone. It’s bright and sunny and it’s of herself and her family. They’re in some unidentifiable patch of hilly grass, having a picnic. Abigail’s smile is wide, and behind her the man Concetta now knows as Will Graham is laughing his head off, because their new dog just jumped on Hannibal Lecter, much to his obvious dismay. They’re picture perfect and wonderfully happy and so very…. normal.
Concetta stares at it for a long time, enough that the sun starts to set and her roommate knocks on her door, wondering what she’s doing. Concetta stuffs the letter and the photo back into its envelope and hides it in her desk.
She leaves her room feeling like she’s being watched.
__________
Concetta dreams.
She stands in a sunlit rolling field with a spring breeze curling around her. A dog runs up to her, and she crouches down to pet it.
“Milo!” Abigail shouts.
Concetta looks up to see her running towards them, Maggie in tow. Her smile is bright and honest. Concetta stands to face her.
“You came to visit me,” Abigail says, warm like honey.
Concetta opens her mouth to speak but her voice is gone.
Abigail reaches for her hands excitedly, gripping them tight. “I’m so glad you came! It hasn’t been the same without you.”
Her fingers brush the scarf tied to Concetta’s wrist, and her smile widens.
“I didn't think you would keep it. I wanted you to. I'm happy you did.”
Concetta looks down at their hands, finds her voice. “I always wear it. I don’t know why. I should not.”
Abigail starts to walk backwards, pulling her.
“I know why. You miss me.”
The wind swirls the horizon into an inky black, howling around Concetta’s ears and filling them with screams. She looks up and Abigail’s face is coated in blood, smile sweet but with sharp teeth.
A deep, throbbing fear beats through her, and Concetta realizes it’s not Abigail that scares her, it’s the fact that she is not scared of Abigail at all.
“I am not like you!” Concetta shouts, over the wind.
Abigail’s smile never falters. “No, you’re not. But you still miss me.”
The hills below them undulate and swim and vanish, and all that’s left is choking black and empty white and the blood dripping down Abigail’s chin. She pulls Concetta closer, kisses her cheek, and they evaporate together like smoke, circling through the wind.