“Not quite,” she whispered. “But I’ll be on my way in five
minutes.”
Chapter 19
Claire
The fact that it was the middle of the night didn’t mean
anything to her. Claire had spent every single one of the past
four days since sending Haley home doing nothing but
restlessly wandering the house. When she wasn’t restless in
body, she was restless in mind. She’d sit for hours, staring into
blank space, seeing nothing, lost in memories.
It was the first time in a long time that those memories were
pleasant ones. That made them hurt so much worse. One
single good memory could be far more cutting than all the bad
ones combined.
She felt like she was coming apart. All the neat stiches
holding her
in line were splitting open. She was oozing at the
seams. She was destroyed at those neat little black lines of
thread that were becoming so increasingly messy.
Her sister called. She didn’t answer. Her mom called. She
put her off. The stacks of paperwork on her desk should have
been growing like the number of emails in her inbox. She
missed meetings. People from the company called. They left
messages that she didn’t return. She didn’t leave the house.
She was afraid of anyone seeing her the way she was. She
didn’t look at herself in the mirror. She was afraid of seeing
herself.
Wrecked.
In less than a month, a twenty-one-year-old had wrecked
everything she’d so carefully assembled herself into being. It