Where the Light Enters (Colorado Chapters Book 2) by Miner Kathy

Author:Miner, Kathy [Miner, Kathy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2015-05-23T16:00:00+00:00

TEN: Piper: Walden, CO

“No regrets.” Piper leaned close to the mirror in the dimly lit bathroom, and hissed the words she began each day with. She gazed into her own eyes, eyes that crackled and sparked with the rage that never left her these days. She touched her reflection self tenderly on the forehead, the cheek, the lips, and the rage lit her from within, an inferno under her skin. “None.”

Then, she sat down on the closed toilet lid and carefully sliced the inside of her left bicep open with a scalpel she’d taken from the clinic. Sting, then burn, then blood sliding free. Piper took a deep, shuddering breath. With the blood flowed rage, terror, frustration, horror. Another deep breath, and sweet calm, sweet relief, flowed in its wake.

The first time she’d done this had been the night Josh died. The second, a few days later. And every day since. How she had despised the kids who cut in high school and college – attention-getting behavior, she’d scoffed. Humbling, to know they had been right: The pain you could control was infinitely better than the pain you couldn’t. Piper knew the mechanics of it, the rush of endorphins, the illusion of control and all that, and still was helpless to deny the need. She existed as two people these days – one who continued to watch and reason and scheme, and another who had to slice open her own body to keep the wailing berserker at bay.

She bandaged her arm with the ease of practice, discarded the bloody tissue she had used to stanch the flow, and returned the scalpel to its hiding place on top of the window frame. When she was finished, she once again met her own eyes in the mirror. “You’ll be okay,” she whispered. “You will. You can make it one more day.”

Piper left the bathroom and sat at the table to watch her birds, waiting quietly while Brody finished his preparations for the day. She had kept her head down for the past three weeks, pretending to be subdued in the wake of Josh’s death. It sounded almost benign when she said it to herself that way: “Josh’s death.” Not “Josh’s murder,” or “Josh’s execution by my hand.” But why should she eat guilt over it? They had all – Josh included – played the cards that had been dealt. It wasn’t her fault that Josh’s hand had been the loser.

As always when these thoughts crossed her mind, she listened for her mother’s voice. Naomi despised nothing so much as people who didn’t take responsibility for their decisions and actions. Piper could still remember the battle-fire that lit her mother’s eyes when one of her daughters dared utter the forbidden words, “But mom, it’s not my fault!”

As she’d gotten older, they had battled royal over Piper’s refusal to own the consequences of her hurtful words. Piper’s stance: She could think and say what she pleased. If her words hurt people, well, that was their problem.

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