I lifted the blade with my right hand and pressed it against my left wrist. With one swift movement, I dragged it straight down along the green line, opening the vein.

Blood poured down my arms, drenching my white dress and bedsheets. A wince escaped my mouth as my chest heaved. I began to tremble. A feeling of warmth rushed over my body, beginning in my arms and making its way down to my feet. Then the smell came, like rusted iron.

Lying there, I watched the blood pouring out of me like honey. I’d always loved the colour red. I thought of my mother, what she had told me that day in the grass, and wondered if my eyes were seeing the truth.

Then a moment of terror seized me.

I don’t want to die.

It typically takes forty-five minutes to bleed to death from wrist lacerations.

I don’t want to die. I just don’t want to be myself anymore.

Too much time.

It will be over soon.

Another memory came flooding back.

My father used to take us to church every Sunday, while my mother stayed home in bed. The cathedral was old, the architecture aggressively Romanesque. There was a grotto adjacent to the building with the Virgin Mary, adorned in robes, at the centre.

When mass was finished, we exited the church, shaking the priest’s hand as we always did.

“Bless you, my child,” he said, squatting down to touch my face.

Sprinting across the road, bound for our parked car, one of my sandals came loose and dropped in the middle of the street. I stopped and bent to retrieve it, oblivious to the minivan that was barrelling toward me.

I heard my father’s hysterical cries in the distance: “Grace—move.”

I was frozen in place.

Turning my head, I watched as my father ran for me, but it was too late. The car was inches from me.

The driver slammed on the brakes, and I felt a gust of wind that immediately gave me goosebumps.

My father was by my side. He scooped me up in one arm, yelling at the driver and pounding the hood with his fist. “Watch where you’re going, you fucking idiot.”

He carried me safely back across the road, laid me down, and kneeled in front of me, squeezing my upper arms so tightly they left a white imprint for a moment afterwards.

“Never, ever run into the road like that,” he yelled. I watched his face transform from rage to fear to relief. He started crying and hugged me close, holding me in an embrace as families poured out of the church and traffic resumed unaffectedly.

Chapter 90

When I was a little girl, I would pray every night before I went to sleep, as I had been taught to do. Kneeling by my bed with my sister, we asked God to bless our friends and family.

Oh Angel of God

My guardian dear

To Whom His love

Commits me here

Ever this day

Be at my side

To light and guard

To rule and guide

Amen.