Chapter 81

Zara is quiet when we leave the pack house and on the ride home. She perks up a little over takeout Thai food for dinner, but then excuses herself to the living room.

I let her work and go to my office to read some of her journal, like she asked me to. The entries don’t seem to be in chronological order. Whatever page she opened to, is where she would write, giving the entries a sense of urgency. Some of her writings are dark and disturbing. Not like the Zara I know or love at all. This is beyond the walls she described trying to crush her. It’s like she has resigned herself to the shadows they have created, just waiting until the day they fall. I try to imagine the mind of someone who could write about hurting themselves, but I can’t, especially not her.

As I flip through the pages, reading bits and scraps of paper that Zara has haphazardly pasted into the book. One scrap has my name on it. The surrounding words were random, mixed in with odd glyphs