Her hand shot out for the banister, but her fingers only grazed the polished wood. Close enough to feel its smoothness, not close enough to grip. Her eyes locked with the figure still standing on the landing, and she saw a flash of horror that mirrored her own.
Gravity claimed her.
The first impact drove every molecule of air from her lungs. Her shoulder blade cracked against the hard edge of a step, and then she was tumbling backward in a disorienting, violent blur of ceiling and spindles and walls. Pain exploded across her back, her hips, her legs, each step delivering its own brutal punishment as she tried desperately to grab hold of something. But her nails only scraped uselessly against the gleaming wood,too smooth to gain leverage, and a strangled cry tore from her lips before the back of her head snapped against another step and cut the sound short.
Time broke apart.
The world reduced itself to a series of impacts and the brief, weightless silences between them. Her vision blurred and darkened at the edges, and she couldn’t think, couldn’t process anything beyond the desperate need for it to stop.
The marble floor rushed up to meet her, and the back of her skull connected with it in a concussive explosion of white light. For one strange, suspended moment, the light held, bright and absolute. Then the world tilted to the side, and everything began to grow dim.
Something warm spread beneath her head, pooling slowly, cradling her skull like a liquid pillow. Through the encroaching darkness, she heard footsteps on the stairs, hurried and panicked, descending fast. They stopped beside her.
A sharp, involuntary gasp. A caught breath somewhere above. And then a voice, the words coming slowly, as though the speaker couldn’t quite believe what they were saying.
“What have I done?”
The whisper reached Iris through a thickening fog, distant and muffled, like she was hearing it from the bottom of a swimming pool. She wanted to respond. She wanted to scream that this was exactly what she’d been talking about all along.
Consequences.
Actions.
The weight of choices made in the dark.
This was what happened when people spent their whole lives pretending, and someone finally held up a mirror.
But her lips wouldn’t move. Her gaze drifted upward and settled on the chandelier. The crystal drops caught what was left of the light and scattered it into tiny, fading stars. She wouldnever travel the world. There would be no newsroom, no byline, no breathless chase after a story that mattered. No suitcase packed for somewhere far from here. She had become small and insignificant, just another dirty secret for someone to bury.
The stars dimmed, one by one, until there was nothing left but the quiet.
2
Kinsley Aspen
July (Present Day)
Thursday, 3:48 pm
The coffee in Kinsley’s mug had gone cold. A thin film of creamer had formed across the surface, not unlike the numbness that had spread through her limbs over the past twenty minutes. She’d been sitting on the couch the entire time, staring into the tan liquid as though it might offer her some kind of salvation, some answer she hadn’t thought of yet.
It hadn’t.
And it wouldn’t.
The afternoon light filtered through the living room curtains, illuminating those pesky dust motes that drifted aimlessly through the warm air. They hung there, suspended in time, just as she was. Waiting for the inevitable fall.
Across from her, her father sat in the matching overstuffed chair. George Aspen’s face was drawn with concern and exhaustion, the legal pad balanced on his knee nearly blank save for a few hastily scribbled notes. His pen tapped against theyellow paper in a soft, irregular rhythm that might have irritated her on any other day.
“Are you sure this is what you want to do, butterfly?” George asked, his voice breaking through the thick silence between them. “I still think it best if we?—”
“I’m sure, Dad.”
His childhood nickname for her caused her to wince internally, though she wouldn’t rob him of such a treasured habit. She’d already committed a far worse sin. She had taken a life, and there was no rewinding time to undo it.
The memory from that night had become her constant companion, cycling through her mind several times a day for the past twenty-one months. Soon, those recollections would be all she had left to contemplate from behind prison bars.
“Kinsley?” her father prompted, leaning forward slightly. His blue eyes, so like her own, searched her face for any sign that she might reconsider.
