Chapter 61

One week later.

The funeral blurred past like a bad dream , brief, unbearable, and impossibly final. Every ritual, every condolence, every hollow phrase from well-meaning strangers had passed over her like cold rain, leaving a numbness deeper than sleep. Rainee felt as if someone had carved away the center of her life and left only an aching shell. She could not grasp why she was still breathing when the people who had been her home were gone.

There was a small, cruel mercy in her blindness. Part of her was grateful she would never have to see them like that, how would she have been able to bear the sight? And yet grief does not trade cleanly for relief. She was haunted by regret, she had not been able to see them one last time, to memorize the lines of their faces, to press her forehead against their cheeks. The not-seen became a wound that would not heal.

For a week she did not speak. Sound seemed pointless, language, meaningless. Alex stayed by her side like a sentinel. He was w