Fable, Ivy, and Dad should have been up at this hour.
My heart thundered up the stairs, the most disastrous scenarios toppling over in my mind. But it all halted when I found my family asleep in the attic. They must have had one of those long nights. The silent, stirring hours that followed once emptiness crawled into a person. An unforgiving feeling when something was missing.
We had many long nights after Mom succumbed to catatonia and even longer nights since the Shadows came.
I gazed down at my sisters. Fable’s twisting brown locks laid across Ivy’s perfect skin. I hadn’t been away for long, but I remembered the most harrowing nights in this attic. We no longer had responsibilities to keep us busy. We only had silence and darkness—an abyss trapping us with our dreadful thoughts.
I descended the stairs to Mom’s bedroom.
She lay like Sleeping Beauty: hands folded, eyes closed. A dreamy beep in the bedroom was her heartbeat on the monitor at her side. Her appearance would make it impossible for anyone to believe that there was endless torture playing in her head.
Floorboards groaned under my feet when I took careful steps to her closet. Her lovely silk and chiffon gowns dangled like gem-colored spirits in her armoire. I fingered the blood-red one and let it slip between my fingers. It transported me back to when I was younger.
The fabric ticklesmy toes when I twirl, and the skirt laps across the floorboards with a whoosh. Thin straps fall off my shoulders, but it still hugs me like I’m surrounded by water. I’m pretty—a mermaid who isn’t ready, but a great big opening at the bottom for a tail to soar through a current for when I am. No one can see what I can do in a dress yet, oh, but one day they will. All I can think of—as I look into my reflection—is what I’ll become when I’m older. One day, this dress will fit me in the same way it fits Momma.
Footsteps ascend, and my breath catches on a twirl.
The bedroom door swings open, and Momma stands behind me in the armoire’s reflection. Her face falls, and for a moment, her eyes appear distant. Almost as if she yanked a memory from its roots.
“Adora, take it off,” she demands.
Her voice is angry, and tears instantly bubble in the corners of my eyes. The skirt is balled into my fist as I try to keep it off the ground. “I don’t want to.”
Her face folds into a grimace. “You look ridiculous.” She stalks deeper into the room and suddenly stands over me, yanking on the straps to pull them down. “It doesn’t even look pretty on you. Take it off. Take it off, take it off, take it off!” she shouts in a way I have never heard from her before.
I try to stumble away and hug it tightly around my body. “No, Momma, stop!”
In the scuffle, the dress tears. The rip sounds like it’s tearing open our chests.
Mom falls to her knees and clutches the broken strap dangling from the hem.
“Look what you’ve done, Adora!”
I pile the skirt into my arms and run through the bedroom doorway and down the stairs. I run and run and run.
The beepfrom the monitor pulled me back to the present.
I was standing in front of the armoire mirror. Both of its doors were hanging open. The dress was clinging to my body, the shade of blood dripping from my silhouette.
In the mirror’s reflection, Mom was sitting upright behind me.
Straight black hair curtained her hollow cheeks.
Two big ocean eyes wide open and looking right at me.
A scream burned my throat.
I slammed the armoire door closed, and the mirror shattered to the floor.
Broken shards of glass rained down around my feet.
I turned on my heel. Mom was lying in bed with her eyes closed. The heartbeat on the monitor was slow, steady, and paralyzing. A chill penetrated my bones.
The bedroom door flung open and hit the wall when Ivy stumbled inside, out of breath. Her gaze swept the room. When her eyes met mine, her spine seemed to melt.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said with a sigh. Her black hair was flat on one side and matted on the other. It was the first time I’d seen her in Mom’s room, and she dropped her head and squeezed her temples with one hand. “I thought—I thought that was Mom.” She shook her head. “I thought that for a second, maybe she woke up.” Her voice was tired. Lifeless. “What happened in here? Why are you here, and why are you wearing that dress?”
Confused, I looked down, and it was Mom’s red dress that covered me.
