Chapter 2
Happiness Isn’t for Everyone
ANNA
Freedom.
I hit the gas. With the window down, my hair blew in the summer breeze. I grinned as I remembered when Katie first got her license. She used to drive Eiryn and me everywhere with the music blaring, sweating to death with the windows down because the A/C didn’t work. I missed those days.
The relief was cathartic—I was done with therapy. It had become an extension of the hours I used to sit through police interviews.
My eyes tightened at the memories, and I shoved them back down deep.
No. More.
I never had to sit there in that therapist’s desolate office and count the stains on the carpet again. Never had to answer someone’s questions if I didn’t want to.
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.