I am Mara Goldsberry, and I have killed someone.

I keep saying it, and waiting for it to feel wrong.

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It doesn’t.

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I hide myself in a cabin in the woods where no one can see me but the moon and the forest. They are my friends, and I am content with them. They never speak when I don't want them to. They never try to get a rise out of me to prove I'm wrong.

Sometimes, when I think things like this, I think that maybe I'm still wounded by her.

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Mara.

Her breath whispers through the trees, everlasting, always tickling at my ear, and I hear her call my name.

Mara.

I'm here, I say, but no one answers.

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She left me.

Mara, she insists, but this time I pretend not to hear.

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Sometimes, I like to entertain the idea that I didn’t kill her. Actually, no. All the time. I like to this all the time that she disappeared that day. Perhaps she had fled, sought out a change of scenery. Maybe she was escaping her vengeful arch-nemesis, who had been chasing her around the country for years.

It’s ridiculous, but it helps.

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It was her fault. She shouldn’t have betrayed me. She should have stayed, stayed and been a loving best friend and been just the right kind of quiet.

She shouldn’t have stolen him from me.

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I wonder if she regrets it, in those whispers and giggles on the breeze. If she remembers the heartache she caused.

Then I remember I’m floating, and I’m in an ocean of clouds, and she’s not really here.

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Stars, she’s dead.

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And I’m floating, in an ocean of clouds, and I’m happy. I’m light. I’m free.

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Because I killed her, and now I get him all to myself.