Her Perfect Lies (ARC) by Lana Newton

Author:Lana Newton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HQ Digital
Published: 2019-09-11T17:00:00+00:00

Part II

Chapter 12

Claire spent her days in bed, not sleeping but not quite awake either. On the rare occasions she managed to get up, she felt like she was wading through water, her brain hazy and unresponsive, even though she had stopped taking her medication. Every evening she would place the little pills in her mouth while Paul was watching, as ever the zealous jailer, but as soon as his back was turned, she would rush to the bathroom and spit the pills out into the sink. And yet, she wasn’t feeling any better. What if Paul knew what she was doing and had found a different way to drug her? It would be so easy. All he had to do was ask Nina to add something to Claire’s food.

Or was she being paranoid? Was it just her grief and lack of sleep that made her unable to concentrate on anything other than the dark thoughts swirling around her head? Day after miserable day, she would hover around her bedroom like a ghost, not knowing where to turn. If only she could talk to someone. She craved her mother’s voice over the phone. Logically she understood it couldn’t have been Angela calling her all this time. But in her heart she wanted to believe differently, and did. She desperately needed something to remind her of her mother, to paint a picture of who she was and what she was like. More than anything she wanted to feel close to her, so she spent her sleepless nights turning the house upside down, looking for something that had once belonged to Angela.

And then she found it. Her mother’s Bible was sitting on the bookshelf next to Gone With the Wind and War and Peace, hiding in plain sight. For the first time that she could remember, she felt a glimmer of joy. Her fingertips trembling, she opened the holy book as if it contained a piece of her mother’s soul.

The Bible was old and heavy, all brown leather and golden writing. Claire wanted to press her face to the cover, to feel its smooth surface with her lips, to kiss it like she would kiss her mother’s forehead. Something undecipherable was scribbled on the cover page. She had never seen her mother’s handwriting before. It took her a good ten minutes to make sense of the note, letter by letter, word by word.

You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

Claire wondered what her mother was trying to tell her by choosing these particular words from Matthew for the cover page of her Bible.

Claire closed her eyes and repeated the words, like a prayer, except she wasn’t praying for her soul or guidance. She was praying to forget.

Suddenly, while her eyes were closed, her fingers felt something hidden between the pages.

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