The Search for Lily Myers ✓

27 | You Matter to Me

Amelia's eyes flew open as she was jarred awake by an unfamiliar sound.

It took a second for her to even remember where she was, why she was lying in an unfamiliar bed. That noise she just heard—it was as if Henry had cried something out, but was it real? Or had it come from the land of her dreams, something she conjured up in the state halfway between sleep and waking?

Rolling over onto her side, she reached for where she'd left her phone on the nightstand. She had to squint as the bright, white light shone into her face; the time was 4:17 a.m. She'd only been asleep for a few hours.

She edged herself out of the bed, the soft carpet greeting the bottoms of her feet as they touched down onto the floor. Now that she was awake, Amelia felt like she ought to go check on Henry. If he was still sound asleep and she'd just been imagining things, she should be able to tiptoe away without him stirring.

She strained to see her surroundings as she stepped out of the room, but she didn't want to turn any lights on without knowing if he'd fallen asleep with his bedroom door open or closed. So she inched forward tentatively, taking the steps slowly—it wasn't like there was anyone else around to observe how silly she might have looked doing it.

When she got to the top of the stairs, she saw that his door was cracked and the faint bar of light that trailed out from inside suggested that he was, in fact, awake. Not wanting to startle him, Amelia nudged it open as gently as she could.

Henry was sitting up in bed, one hand rubbing at his bleary eyes. His cheeks went slightly pink when he saw her there and he hurried to grab his glasses and hearing aids off the nightstand.

"Shit," he mumbled as he was putting them in and she was hesitantly approaching to sit at the edge of the bed. "Did I wake you up?"

"I thought I heard something," she explained, the mattress dipping slightly as she lowered herself onto it. "Are you okay?"

"It was just a nightmare," he said quietly, staring down at the duvet. "I didn't realize I'd made any noise—I guess there's not usually someone else around to tell me."

Her eyebrows furrowed as she studied his face, the circles under his eyes. "Usually...so this has happened before?"

"Yeah," he mumbled. "It happens most of the time."

"You have nightmares every night?"

Henry gave her a look that was probably meant to be reassuring, a small attempt at a smile, but it didn't meet his eyes. "They're not a new thing for me, no. I've learned to deal with them, they've just been worse these past couple of months with..." he swallowed. "You know, everything."

When he struggled to get the last part out without his voice wavering, Amelia knew that he wasn't nearly as okay as he was letting on. And her mind was transported far away from the anger she had harbored towards him earlier—all she could feel was tenderness for him, the desire to take him in her arms and rest his head on her shoulder and murmur to him that he was going to be okay.

"I didn't know," she said.

"I didn't need you to know. You couldn't have done anything to help me."

They slipped into a steady silence, the question of where they stood hovering unspoken in the air between them. Finally, Henry tilted his chin back towards her.

"I really am so sorry about earlier," he apologized again. "But...I'm not sure I fully understand everything that happened. I knew that I startled you, but when you came out of the kitchen and you seemed like you couldn't even breathe, I was scared senseless. I didn't know how to help."