Susan wouldn’t believe me when I told her I was released.
Almost three years.
I’d tried many times to remember where I’d been for the year I’d been missing. Everyone had their theories. None were right.
Except perhaps one.
I probably had a psychotic break. My blackout, my mom’s murder, the missing year; it could explain everything, except for one crucial detail: there was someone else there that night.
It was after I came to and found her there, perfectly still, as if asleep.
But she wasn’t sleeping.
I remembered fighting with her. I remembered being angry and how cold it had been. Everything else was a hallucination—such terrifying images that I refused to think about it anymore.
Seeing her dead made me panic. I barely remembered anything else other than running into the woods in the dark. That’s when I ran into him. The memory was foggy, like a moment from childhood, entirely composed of how you felt, with no visual elements.
But how I felt when I ran into this person… It was strange, like something had come over me. I knew that I was safe—or at least that’s what I remembered feeling.
After that, there was nothing for an entire year. Authorities had found my mom after Katie and Eiryn raised the alarm when I wasn’t answering their texts.
I glanced at the radio, turning the dial until I got the right station, but when I looked back at the road, my heart dropped into my stomach.
There was a woman there, standing perfectly still. She wasn’t looking my way, but the long blonde hair falling down her back couldn’t be mistaken.
“Mom,” I breathed.
I slammed on the brakes, the tires squealing as I hit the steering wheel.
Shaking, I looked up.
Like a beam of light cascading just right until a subtle shift in the wind caused it to vanish, she was there and gone again.
Tears trailed down raw skin as I took my seatbelt off and closed my eyes.
Taking deep breaths, I swore under my breath and threw my head back against the headrest.
Feeling my heart calm, I looked out my window.
There, on the streetlight, was a raven perched as still as a wax figure.
It was beautiful and peaceful—and it was watching me.
Chapter 3
Evening Fires and Shitty Liars
ANNA
Tomorrow would be my twentieth birthday.
I was determined to try to have a good day, which meant not thinking about my drive home or any other bullshit that was just my head messing with me. I wanted to pretend I was normal. To think I’d have a boyfriend. To go to college. Get a job. I wanted a day when nothing would remind me of what happened that night, and that no one was ever caught. That my memory was still gone. How I’d never fit in here, and not just because of the spectacle of my past, but because I just didn’t quite click with anyone else.
When I went downstairs, I found Susan in the kitchen. She was my best friend’s mom and the person who’d taken me in after I was found.
“Hey,” I said.
She was sitting on a barstool at the island, sipping from a steaming mug.
