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The neighbors say she didn’t scream.

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Not that they ever heard.

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Not that any of them can recall, at least.

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And supposing their ears did detect some high-pitched animal bleat, what of it? No sooner would the hairs on the back of their necks have risen in salute than their brains would have stood them at ease. Nothing to worry about; nothing at all. Just that wiry old cat under the porch next door or the lunch whistle down at the glassworks. A hawk flying free in the sky. I don’t blame them. I know how slippery brains can be, how they like to reconcile things that ought never be squared.

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In the end, it makes no difference. The absence or presence of a scream changes nothing. Still, I can’t dislodge from my mind this notion that her cries went unheeded. Their echoes settled into the earth long ago, yet I will myself to hear them. I can almost make out the pitch, tenor, tone. I fritter hours, entire nights, just trying to recreate everything about that moment. Not to mention all the moments leading up to it, each brick paving the path to ruin. I linger on that path, revisiting scenes I thought I knew so well. But then, out of nowhere, a house looks strange. I’m sure that tree was never there before. Nothing is as it should be. I retrace my steps, scanning the ground for fresh tracks, snapped twigs, looking for turns I might have missed, signs I should have seen . . .

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The past is a perilous place to go strolling; I know this. Safer by a mile to stick to the here and now; I know this, too. How many times has Da said those very words? He sits by the stove in the feeble lamplight, cracking peanuts until his hands are dry and dusted, and he reminds me that yesterday’s dead and gone. Take its lessons, say a prayer, and be on yer way. As if memories can be brushed off as easily as the salt on his fingertips.

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It’s not that I don’t see the wisdom in his counsel. It’s good advice. It is. And I try to heed it. I do. I tell myself not to dwell. But my mind has a mind of its own. So often I catch it drifting. And when it slips away, it goes looking for her. For Cora. Always. Can’t help it. I challenge the children to a game of potsy, and there she is, sitting out back in her sky-blue dress, telling her dolls secrets they’re too young to keep. I clean up after dinner, and Cora is there, sugaring a plate of strawberries or laughing as she swipes a spot of suds from the tip of my nose. Once more I can dance to the air of her voice; once more I hear that musical bird chirp that made her the pet of everyone who knew her.

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But more than on any specific memory, my mind comes to rest in the gaps. The empty spaces. The things I didn’t see. The words I wasn’t privy to.

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I picture a child with cornsilk hair. Huddled in the dark, she searches for angels and prays for night to be over.

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I see a young woman hiding behind hands that spasm and shake. The sound pouring out of her is not so much a scream but a force. A blast. A storm that rattles the windows and lifts the floor, presses through the ceiling and sweeps past the beams, startling the moldered carcasses of roaches and mice, the feeding ground of the ants and mites and smaller creatures. Things she always said were there, even if I couldn’t see them with my naked eye. Though I never understood how an eye can be anything but naked.

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Then again, maybe the neighbors have been right this whole time. Maybe Cora didn’t scream at all. Maybe she was already gone by that point. Her spirit just spirited itself away, tucked into a chrysalis of filigreed iron—still beautiful, delicate, but impervious to anything outside herself. The way she was when I found her.

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Was she really was as closed off as she seemed that day? There is no way to know. All I can do is ask and wonder.

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Did she know when the men arrived? Could she hear them? She replied to neither plea nor command. Maybe she caught words—hurt . . . happened . . . tell—but assigned them no meaning. The voices were just noise, reverberations no different from the skittering of squirrels across the attic floor. And then there were the hands. Could she feel them? I hope not; there were so many. A hand to force her chin up, another to hold the flashlight that burned her eyes. More hands fighting to unlock her arms, pry back fingers that raked dress fibers beneath her nails. Still more to grab her boots and pull her legs straight. Hands resisting her resistance.

Did she know I was there? Did she know I looked on while the men questioned and clawed? How I longed to throw myself in front of her, protect her, but I was held back by more men, more hands. Everywhere in my body, I could feel my heart hammering. It was in my chest, in my ears, in my fingers, knees, tongue. Desperate. Like a fox caught in the jaws of a trap.

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Was it that way for Cora, or had her heart found its way out of her body by then? Maybe her heart built the shelter she took refuge within. The shelter reached only as far as her toes; her world ended there. If she drew in her legs, the world became smaller. The men pried and pulled, and Cora just curled tighter. Tighter. Tighter still. If she could make herself small enough, the world might disappear completely.

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Then, there would be nothing left to break her.

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Then there would be nothing left for her to break.