Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120230 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
“I should’ve listened. But I didn’t, and now all I see when I think of my sister is the way she looked in that box. Her face all bloated up, and the marks from the thin rope she used cutting into her neck, the deep gouges in her skin from where she tried to struggle and tear it off at the end.”
Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I can’t remember my baby sister as she was, Luna. I remember her only as the mangled thing she became.”
My heart thundered. I’d always imagined that Beatrice must’ve taken an overdose. But to commit suicide by hanging? For the girl I’d known, that was an act of violence, of rage. Especially when she had to have known that Darcie was likely to end up viewing her body and the damage she’d done to it.
“I’m so sorry.” My fingers trembled as I stroked her upper arm. “Why didn’t you bring even one of us with you? Why did you try to do everything on your own?”
“My therapist says it was shock and anger.” Flat tone, flatter gaze. “I’m such a bad person that I wanted to obliterate all reminders of my sister and carry on as if nothing had happened.”
Even though I’d blamed Darcie for her actions since that horrible weekend, I couldn’t help but hurt for the naked depth of her grief. “I’m sure that’s not what your therapist meant.”
When she didn’t respond, I said, “Come on. Let’s go get this vintage wine so we can get drunk and weepy, and probably watch Kaea do the naked limbo under a broomstick.”
Bursting into a wet laugh at the reminder of one particular night at the flat, she nodded, and led me to a right turn into another hallway. The cellar door proved to be the one at the very end—far away from the single weak wall lamp that lit up the windowless internal hall. Shadows converged thickly around the door through which we were to enter.
“No horror movie vibes at all,” I muttered.
Darcie’s laugh was forced as she opened the door and pushed the switch on the inside wall. And got a big fat nothing. “Bulb must’ve blown.” She wiped her face on her sweater. “You were right. We should’ve looked for a flashlight.”
“I have my phone.” I turned on the flashlight icon, the resulting light revealing a set of narrow and dusty stairs that vanished into nothingness.
20
Oh, hell no.” Stronger, sounding more like herself, Darcie backed off from the doorway. “You wait here while I run back to the kitchen. I just remembered that Jim keeps his personal flashlight in the pantry.”
I should’ve called after her, told her I wasn’t staying there alone. But I let her go, her footfalls fading quickly as she broke into a jog. After a while, the only sound was my breath. The shadows coalesced into a near-physical presence around me, pressing down on my shoulders and whispering in my ears.
Because as I stared at the circle of light thrown by my phone, I had the chilling realization that this was my future. At least for the short term. A limited field of vision that would get progressively smaller . . . until all that remained was a blurry pinprick.
The doctors had been clear with me. While there was a slim chance that I might retain a small percentage of my vision, that percentage would be limited in the extreme. And even that droplet of vision might be restricted to one eye. It was equally possible that I’d have nothing, the visual world a complete blank.
“I know the temptation is to ignore it, but you can’t.” Dr. Mehta’s kind but firm tone. “This is going to happen. Pretending it won’t will gain you nothing. You have a brief window of time here—time that you can use to set yourself up to thrive in the years to come.”
I hadn’t wanted to listen to her, hadn’t wanted to accept that my world would one day be smaller than the aperture of my favorite camera. I didn’t know why today was different, why the realization settled heavy and solid in my gut.
I spoke the cold truth aloud. “I’m going blind.”
There was nothing the doctors could do, no magic potion I could drink, no operation that’d fix me. I’d have to tell my family soon, my friends, too.
But first, I had to begin to live in the dark.
So despite Darcie’s request that I stay there, I walked into the cellar and down the stairs. The first delicate strands of a spider’s web across my nose and mouth made me shriek, but I was an old hand at tearing through them by the end. Once at the bottom, I should’ve switched off the light, made myself embrace the pitch-black, but I couldn’t.
It wasn’t about safety, about bumbling around in a room full of glass bottles. It was because I was afraid of the dark. I’d always been afraid of the dark. No matter my intention to accept the diagnosis, that fear wasn’t going to vanish overnight.