Silver Stilettos

EPILOGUE | I will always love you [6]

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MAYURI'S POV

February (4 Months Later)

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My neck didn't feel strong enough to hold up the weight of my head, and some moments after swallowing my oblivion, I slipped down the rabbit hole, straight into the dark and gory intestines of Wonderland, all twenty-three feet of them.

The white Xanax pill was a familiar visitor that had turned my stomach into an extended-stay hotel. It took up residence, wore the provided slippers, and donned the fluffy, monogrammed robes. It put its feet up on the table and smoked a cigar with one hand while channel surfing with the other.

Caroline reached out and gently pushed me down against the pillows. I let her, because it was easier to let waves crash over me than to try and surf. "Good girl," I heard her say, and then she sighed, looked away, and I wondered what she was thinking about.

"That's what my mother used to tell me." Caroline's voice was soft, dreamy, and coming from far away. "When I was little and ate all my vegetables. When I was a little older and I stopped telling her lies about my uncle." A grisly smile flickered over her face. "Whenever I did something she thought made me seem normal. Good girl, Care Bear. See, it's not so difficult to do what Mommy tells you."

My skin crawled. Caroline noticed.

"Oh, yes," she said, the words airy in a careless, flippant way. "I did make that up about Uncle Arjan."

Talking with her was sometimes like watching trashy daytime television. You'd hear something outrageous, ridiculous even, and you'd be on her line, a little metal hook through your lip. All she had to do was reel you in.

"You must have been so happy," I said, hating her even though my voice didn't, "driving them apart like that."

A smirk of self-satisfaction settled on her lips. "I didn't. He denied it. Cried about it. Begged me to tell the truth, to just say that I'd made it up because I was angry with him for taking my father's place." Her face turned hard, the unforgiving set of her lips and cheeks like marble. "It was," she pronounced, disgust dripping from every word, "disgusting. The way he blubbered like a child."

Seeing her then, an unrepentant snake sitting on the edge of my bed, within striking distance, sent my heart into stabbing pain. It was like her words were invisible voodoo, pricking pins into me, each one not gentle and precise, but thrust long and hard, like she was preparing for a javelin throw.

"Did I scare you?"

I shook my head, but it was too late. She'd already seen the fear on my face. I didn't even know why I kept up the pretense of courage. It was false bravado, the kind of courage that came as quickly as it left. I was not a lion-hearted girl. I was rabbit, snared in a hunter's trap, and my time was running out.

We both heard noises coming from the bathroom, clatters and pit-pats of soles slapping against cheap linoleum. Reed, my only flimsy defense against Caroline's capricious cruelty. I waited for the swing of the door, but Reed began to hum, some old jingle that used to play on television every year around Christmas, and with a start, I realized how long it had been.

I'd missed Christmas. I'd missed my parent's anniversary and Aaya's birthday and winter formal and the stupid fights about who would put up the Christmas tree—and the even bigger one about who would take down the Christmas tree—and our family tradition of staying up until midnight every year to watch the ball drop in Times Square on television, all of us crammed in Mom and Dad's bed.