He nodded. “All right. Go shower and sleep. I’m here. Okay, Pigeon?”

I nodded, my chin quivering. “Okay, Daddy.”

But when I stepped into the hallway, I didn’t head to the other side of the apartment for my room.

I turned for Dad’s room instead.

This room was the same as it had always been. The book she’d been reading when she died still sat on the nightstand. The bedding had faded and thinned, but it was the same navy-blue and white florals, the bed neatly made with care by Dad every day. But I didn’t linger. Instead, I opened the closet, dropping to sit in the small corner, closing the door behind me.

Light snuck in through the slats of the shutters, slashing lines of light on everything inside.

And I laid my head on my knees and cried for all I’d lost.

21

Empty Spaces

TESS

My exhaustion was complete.

I was a fire that had burned to ash, leaving only dust and dying embers. What had once been solid was now in pieces small enough to be carried away by nothing more than a gentle breeze. But somehow, I found a way to haul myself out of bed that morning. To dress and brush my teeth, bleary-eyed and numb. To exchange a few words of deflection with my father before ducking out the front door. And I went down to the flower shop, not ready to face what awaited me, but without any choice in the matter.

The shop needed me, and so did Mrs. Bennet.

I’d spent a long time in the safety of Mom’s closet, exhausting my tears long enough to shower and slide into bed. But as tired as I was, I barely slept, my mind too frantic, too busy fantasizing about all the unhappy endings that could come to pass, all the things I would lose in their wake. It was only between fits of crying and long, silent stretches spent staring at my ceiling that I fell into restless sleep, the kind that exploited exhaustion without relieving it.

Two hours I lasted before I peeled myself out of bed with one objective—distraction.

I cooked two meals from scratch. Watered the plants. Took some photos for Instagram. Played Mario Kart with Dad. Watched a couple of my favorite romcoms—The Princess Bride and Soapdish. Dove into a new book and stayed up until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. But the second I turned out the light and my distractions were gone, my brain woke up and chugged through everything that had come to pass, imagined what would come next.

The first item of business was to try to pin down exactly why I was so upset, and I boiled it down to a few points, which I held on to, repeating them on a loop like Arya Stark and her kill list.

At the surface was the skin-deep wound: we had lost our shot with the magazine, not only by looking like a pack of fools, but incompetent fools. I looked incompetent—which on its own hit a deep perfectionist trigger in me—and the responsibility felt like mine, regardless of my knowledge that it wasn’t.