CHAPTER SEVENTY
Oliver had given me an impossible task.
The moment he left, I crawled off my blanket and over to every lantern I could reach.
I knew straightaway that he’d shortened the chain by more than half, and that most of the lanterns were going to burn out within a couple of days.
I turned off the four lanterns I could get to and kept the lantern closest to me burning low.
I didn’t waste time.
I cracked open the familiar book and flipped through the pages, my eyes skimming over the lines.
This was Oliver’s prized jewel. This was the book that made him.
The literary masterpiece in the philosophy world.
Yes, it was riveting. Oliver had a way with words.
His interpretation of Seneca was refreshing, but no one knew the lengths Oliver had gone in his pursuit to stand by the beliefs he claimed were life-changing.
I was the example he used throughout the pages.
Seneca should have been more rigid in ensuring Nero embraced Stoicism; therefore, Oliver exercised his idea of rigidity on me.
The external events that led me to Oliver were beyond my control, but being here, imprisoned in this fucking cabin shed, had been of my own doing.
I needed to take responsibility for my actions.
Oliver needed to see me break. He needed to believe I felt that responsibility deep in my bones—that I would take no action, only embrace and accept the fault.
I read the book, my eyes straining over every word, every passage, every line.
When I finished, I went to the very beginning and started again.
I was somewhat proficient at rationing water, but ten days with two tall glasses was a tall order.
It was enough to break anyone. It brought me closer to death than I had ever been.
By what I thought was the third day, I was so weak, I didn’t trust myself to pick up either glass.
I was shaky, unsteady. Dropping either glass or spilling any of the water was a death sentence.
I didn’t want to be anywhere near the water, in fact.
I read the book, swapping out lanterns as they slowly began to die around me.
One by one, the lanterns I couldn’t reach burned out.
Though I didn’t know how many days I’d been in here, I knew they’d died out too early, and that I wasn’t even halfway through the ten days.
The room got darker, and the heat never broke. I felt like I was being slowly roasted over a fire. I removed most of my clothes and pressed my body against the cool chains. Sometimes I rolled along the floor, stealing whatever coolness I could from its surface.
Between reading, I trained myself not to think. I turned my mind off and existed in time and space as though I were an inanimate object. A piece of the furniture in this dark and dank place. In these moments, I felt my brain muscles relax as I dangled there, half-conscious, half-asleep.
In those moments, the past played out before me without my permission.
“It would be so easy to give up, wouldn’t it?” Misery asked, crouching to me in its black form as I stared up at the ceiling. “You wouldn’t be here if you’d simply been the perfect wife he trained you to be.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to. It meant thinking, and I wasn’t going to do that. I was part of the room around me.
“Imagine if you did what was expected of you. He wouldn’t have brought you to this place.
Don’t you know what an honor it is to be his wife?
This is a man most women would die to have.
All that prestige to his name! He’s charitable and considerate.
He’s an extraordinary mentor and teacher.
And he takes care of you. You don’t even have to work!
You get to read in your own space, and if you hadn’t taken those pills, you might have had a family with him!
“Just give in, Daisy. Read that book and satisfy him.”
Her shadow pranced around me, becoming part of the wall and then the ceiling and then the spot next to me. She repeated those notions to me in a way that sounded so utterly logical.
“It’s so easy,” she whispered in my ear. “Become like me. Become a shadow, Daisy, and accept his teachings. Give in, and through his hard work, you’ll be the perfect wife.”
She never stopped talking.
Even when the lanterns died out and the blackness swallowed the world around me whole. Her shadow never faltered. Never ceased to torment me with a road that would be so easy to wander down.
All it took now was a little nudge.
A small poke from the shadow to set me on my way to being the perfect Mrs. Black.