Fade to Black (The Black Trilogy Book 1) by MC Webb Read Free Book Online

water of “healing” salts.
    The water was running, and steam rose from the spout. Nana’s light blonde hair looked oddly withered like a sunflower faded in the dark. She seemed to search for what to say. Reaching for my hand, she drew it to her chest not at all concerned with its wetness.
    “Love?” she whispered to me. “It’s gone,” she said with her slight German accent, sadly or maybe Nana was relieved?
    I felt nothing, as she told me what I knew already, I just watched her lips move as she spoke softly. I was aware of a movement inside my stomach like bubbles then it was gone. Silent. Dead. I hadn’t spoken yet. I heard the doctors tell Papaw and Nana I was in shock, and my mind would need to recover as well as my body.
    “It’s the scars unseen we need to be concerned with,” he had told them grimly.
    I sat wondering if I may be mentally damaged and that’s why Nana was speaking low and with caution. Maybe if I looked closely in the mirror I wouldn’t see me, but a disfigured person that would need a scarf to hide my face when I went out in public like the Muslim women in papaws stories.
    When my skin began to wrinkle, I stood and allowed Nana to wrap me in an oversized towel and brush and dry my hair, like I was smaller than I was. Truth is, I was much smaller than I was aware of. My once shiny strawberry blonde hair hung limp and lifeless like fragile little twigs. My collarbone and ribs looked grotesque, sticking out like a horror movie. My brown eyes looked dull even after days of sleep still set too deep in their sockets.
    After my hair was brushed and dried I slipped into one of Nana’s soft knit gowns. I had my own nightgowns at the house, but I preferred Nana’s things that smelled like her, as if I could wrap myself in clean things, and the aroma could drown my thoughts.
    I believed, as I slid in between the sheets, that maybe I had died and this was heaven. The cool clean bed covers, the goose-down pillows, the clean gown. But the reality of it was, I wasn’t at all cleaned. I was soiled to the bone. Daniel made sure of that. No matter what I put on, or how long I stayed in the tub, I was still nasty on the inside.
    Nana stayed with me every night, as I tossed and turned. She sat silently in the oversized chair in the corner of the room, where I’d seen new mothers nurse their babies. She was waiting on me to talk. I knew that.
    I wasn’t ready for her to know how deep the poison had gone. I was being weaned off of medications I’d been given. Sleep was hard for me without a pill now, but Nana felt it was time I tried on my own. I drifted to sleep, or what I considered sleep, but was more like moments of suspension then a crash back to the present. I may have slept an hour each night, and every time I looked over at the chair, there she would be, a solid reminder that I was loved. I was too broken at that moment to feel it, but I knew in my head it was so.
    The days came, and each one was the same as the one before. I stayed in bed, trying to recover. My wounds were deeper than the bruises or cuts. I had my meals in bed, and I remained silent. I watched the sun rise and set. I watched Nana as she spoke to me. I was afraid if I slept long, or began to speak, all of it would disappear, and I would wake in the trailer.
    Nathan came and sat quietly with me. Much of the time, he just stared out the window, watching the sun with me. Nana continued to sit with me, and Papaw came in to tell me my favorite stories. Up and down his eyebrows rose and fell as he did this. It made me physically ache for my dad. Little by little, each day I felt my heart close up around the broken shards within it.
    Sleep was my enemy. I would wake suddenly, thinking Daniel was on top of me. Nana would come sit on the bed with me until I calmed down, but finally, after several nights of this, she remained in her chair, watching me by the soft glow of light coming from the bathroom. I looked for her when I woke enough to