The footage was dark, but clear enough. Jordan Gilbert reached out and took a girl's hand, and a moment later she pulled him into her arms.

It was that same day.

When he came out of the haunted house, he looked at me with red-rimmed eyes, his voice breaking as he tried to steady it. "Carrie, I finally know what it feels like to be alive."

But the woman who held his hand inside that place was me.

I have a panic disorder. For him, I forced myself in, swallowing triple my dose beforehand.

I was afraid the story beats would be too much, that they'd make his condition worse, so even choking on my own fear, I went in to stay beside him.

But I was afraid of wounding his pride, so the moment it ended, I hurried back out.

And let Penelope Pruitt take my place.

I never imagined I'd been sewing a wedding dress for someone else all along.

In the few short minutes it took me to watch that video, he'd said Penelope's name at least ten times.

"Could you please stop saying her name?"

My voice cracked.

Jordan paused, and his eyes went hollow again. "What's wrong? Did I do something wrong again?"

That line again.

Six years, and every time we touched anything close to feeling, this was all he had. Like he used his emotional disorder to trap me, to force me to drop the subject every single time.

"Jordan, who is your girlfriend, exactly? What has a mute girl like Penelope ever done to make you happy? All of that was a script. Do you even understand what a script is?"

He looked at me, and for once something surfaced in his eyes.

"Caroline, when did you get so cruel?"

I thought he'd fight with me.

But after two seconds of silence, he picked up his coat, opened the door, and walked out.

An hour and a half later, Robert Bishop messaged me. "Why'd your Jordan show up in the middle of the night?"

"Oh, right, you still haven't sent me the new script. He's stuck running an old one tonight, so no promises on the effect."

I wrote back, "Okay. Is Miss Pruitt still with him?"

A thumbs-up came through from the other end.

"You called it exactly. No wonder you're our top-selling writer!"

I let out a faint scoff and turned the screen dark.

It isn't that I can predict him. It's that I know Jordan's nature too well.

Six years ago, when we first met, I'd already heard about the famous Golden Boy Gilbert, and especially about his condition.

He looked like some finely carved statue, and inside he was cold to the point of emptiness.

After we got together, I thought love could fill those hollow places. But it turned out a hollow man isn't a man without feeling. His heart simply refused to beat for me.

"The penthouse suite you reserved at the Lakeview Hotel is ready. Seven o'clock tomorrow evening."

When the text popped up, I froze for a second.

I'd already guessed Jordan meant to propose at tomorrow night's anniversary. I just never thought he could be careless enough to leave the confirmation linked to my number in the app.

So the message came straight to me.

Even before that, I'd been getting a surprise ready myself.

Two red lines I'd found half a month ago. I'd meant to announce it on the anniversary.

To tell him, too, that there wasn't nothing between us. That there was at least one life we could bring into the world.

But now it all felt pointless.

Did Jordan actually care?

The year I met him, I had a speech disorder. I was a "little mute" too.

No one in class wanted anything to do with me. Even talking to me seemed like too much to ask. Only he did. Everyone called him cold, yet he was the one who stepped in when I got cornered in the stairwell and nearly bullied.

He looked out for me for half a semester, until I transferred away.

Later, when we met again, I fought my way back to speaking, and I was certain of the warmth underneath his silence.

Once I mentioned offhand that a pair of shoes rubbed my heels raw. The next day, someone had lined the heels with blister pads.

After we got together, I never had to order for myself. Every time we went to a restaurant, he'd read through the whole menu first, then rattle off the dishes I'd casually mentioned wanting over the past few days, pushing them across the table with a blank face. "See if it's these."

I thought that was liking someone. Caring.

I also thought I owned a little patch of ground in his heart. But now I wasn't sure.

Maybe it was just the gentleman's manner carved into Jordan's bones. He'd have done the exact same thing for any girl.

To put it bluntly, the two of us were more like roommates who had no business being together. Different habits, different values. The only thing in sync was that bit of business in bed.

A wave of nausea surged up my stomach. I clapped a hand over my mouth and dry-heaved a few times, and then the cold spread through me.

It was past midnight when Jordan came home.

He changed his shoes. His face carried a rare irritation. "Why aren't you asleep yet? Waiting for me?"

"Tonight's script was terrible. So flat it put me to sleep. I could tell what would jump out next with my eyes closed."

He went on to himself, as if the earlier fight and awkwardness had quietly passed.

"And Penelope was strange today. The second she came out she got right up in my face to scare me. I tried to say hello and she acted like she didn't know me and just kept doing it!"

He kept griping about how cold Penelope had been, and the disappointment in his eyes was plain to see.

It was the first time in six years he'd poured this much emotion out to me. Yet I sat there and felt like my ears were wrapped in a layer of something.

Hollow inside.

That familiar feeling came back, a thousand words jamming up in my throat.

Then Jordan glanced down at his phone, and I caught the contact name at the top of the message thread.

Penelope again.

"Penny says she doesn't dislike me. She just had no choice, because she was working, so she had to do the job strictly by the book."

Jordan lifted his head, his tone full of urgency. "I think I need to go clear things up with her. When I left just now, I treated her really badly."

When he said "Penny," the ends of those two syllables shot up wildly. It wasn't simple excitement.

I raised my eyes and, without thinking, looked at the back of his neck.

Below the collar, that faint blue-green glowing stamp was still there.

Seven days ago, when the haunted house game ended, the staff pressed a stamp onto the back of every player's neck. And Jordan's had been stamped by Penelope's own hand.

"What's that? Why is it still there? Jordan, aren't you a germaphobe?"

Jordan paused, as if he hadn't expected me to notice such a small detail. Then he slipped back into that usual look that gave away neither joy nor sorrow.

"Forgot to wash it off. It's just a stamp. Are you really going to make an issue of this too?"

Before, when we kissed, even if my lipstick smudged onto his face, he'd wipe it again and again with a disinfectant wipe.

And that stamp had been pressed onto who knew how many people.

I nodded. I was smiling, and then the tears came down.

He couldn't even be bothered to humor me.

I threw the cup off the table. Glass sprayed everywhere. The emotion overwhelmed me, and my stomach churned again.

The next second, I bent over and dry-heaved.

Jordan quickly caught my arm and pulled out a tissue and handed it to me, fast, the motions of someone who was nervous.

But his brow didn't so much as furrow. He looked utterly unruffled.

It made me sick to watch.

"Where's your ring box?"

His pants pocket had been bulging these past few days. I'd guessed long ago what was inside, which was why I'd known he meant to propose.

But now it lay flat, hollow, empty.

"Stop pretending. Just tell me the truth, okay?"

Jordan wouldn't meet my eyes. He fumbled for the words. "There's a scene in the haunted house that needed a ring as a prop. To make it feel more real, I gave it to Penelope."

"But it doesn't matter. That was just a rehearsal. I already ordered a grander wedding ring—that's the one I actually want to give you."

By the time he finished, my mouth was full of bitterness.

"You rehearsed a proposal with a haunted house actor? Then what am I?"

Jordan looked bewildered. "What do you mean, rehearsed a proposal? I already told you, it was an accident!"

I waved my hand again and again, refusing to keep talking about it.

"Jordan, I honestly don't know how to talk to you anymore."

The low pressure hung over the whole night.

The next day, a childhood friend of Jordan's, just back in the country, asked him out to dinner.

To break the cold war, Jordan told me to come along. Halfway through the meal I went to the restroom to touch up my makeup, and coming back I stopped outside the door of our private room.

The door hadn't shut all the way. Dudley Sanchez's voice drifted out, clearly needling him. "Jordan, why is it that for all these years you only ever fall for mutes?"

My fingers were already on the handle. I didn't move.

"First there was Rebecca Fox, your one great love—deaf and mute, and you wouldn't let her go, still carrying a torch even after she died."

Dudley was grinning through it. "And this Caroline now, never mind her—you kept her around long enough that you basically nursed her back to health. But then where does Penelope come from? Man, are you running a shelter for the disabled?"

I heard Jordan laugh once.

"It's not as dramatic as you make it sound."

"Caroline really does look like Rebecca. When we first met, even the way she talked was exactly the same."

"Later she slowly got her voice back, and I honestly couldn't get used to it. Looking back now, the reason I was willing to get close to her back then was probably that mute quality. It overlapped with the person in my memory."

Dudley whistled. "So Caroline was just your stand-in? Then what about Penelope?"

Jordan's voice went flat. "Penelope was an accident."

"You know the feeling I get around Penelope? Like my heart's been silent for a long time, and then she showed up, and all at once there was an echo again."

"Once Caroline was cured, I never felt that anymore."

"She's too normal. More and more like an ordinary person. Sometimes I look at her and I miss that little girl who used to hide in the corner, unable to make a sound."

Dudley asked, "That diary of Rebecca's… do you still have it?"

"Mm."

My fingers slid off the handle.

That loss of speech from when I was fourteen was crawling back, inch by inch.

I fled home like a refugee.

I dug out the diary Dudley had mentioned. The first page, all of it, was Rebecca.

I don't know how long I turned pages before I finally found my own name.

"A new girl transferred into class today. Her name is Caroline Butler."

"A little mute. Another little mute."

"I asked the teacher if I could sit with her, and the teacher was surprised—said I'd never sat with anyone before."

"Maybe it's because there aren't many girls like Rebecca, and she's one of them."

I closed the diary, tears breaking loose, my whole body shaking beyond control.

"Why aren't you back yet? Does the restroom really take this long?"

Jordan's call came through. I fought to force out a single syllable to answer him, pressing frantically at my chest, and no sound would come.

I wanted to ask him who Rebecca was.

Whether he'd sat down beside me back then only because, like her, I couldn't speak.