Elsie had stayed in bed the whole afternoon, from when the sun was brightly shining until it disappeared behind nightfall.
To be honest, she hadn’t really slept at all.
She just laid there in the dark, too drained to even get up and turn on the light. The darkness was suffocating, but moving felt like too much effort.
She stared blankly at the blue-gray sky outside the window. The sound of traffic drifted in from a distance—life was moving on as usual, but she felt completely stuck, like she was drowning in still water.
It felt like her mind was empty, yet in another sense, overflowing.
Memories jumped from the haunting loss of her parents, to the years spent under the Harding family’s roof. From their wedding day all the way to that ridiculous, deceitful agreement she’d s
