I raised my niece on my own — eight years later, she pointed at a woman in the next beach changing cubicle and whispered, “Aunty, look… she has my mark”

” Joan whispered. “I went back for her and still walked out alive. She didn’t.”

“And you still didn’t come home?”

“I was burned. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t look in mirrors. I thought Ruth would be frightened of me.”

“She was a baby.”

“I was burned.”

“I was scared of me.”

I let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “So you let me tell her you were dead?”

“I saw continue reading …