I had drained Helen’s father dry, taking from the side that wasn’t so charred the skin hung off of it. Helen just sat in the corner, watching me drinking of her mother. She was crying, but her tears were silent. Only the tiny sniffs that I could easily detect now gave her away.
We were in those positions when Haydn appeared in the doorway. I felt her presence as surely as if she’d announced it.
She looked around the room at my handiwork and I was quick to fetch Helen from the corner. I held her out to Haydn. My offering. Haydn stared down at her. And then she looked up at me.
Those things I long to forget that I never will? The look on Haydn’s face is the foremost one. I had tried so hard to prove myself to her, to prove she had done the right thing in turning me, and for her to look at me with such disgust? Such revulsion?  A biological parent’s rejection would hurt less.
She didn’t say anything. She just turned and walked away from me. Left me in my chaos, with my gift to her now sobbing in my hands.
I was right. It was a test. And I had failed miserably.