18
Was there ever such a long, dreadful Thursday? Danica wasn’t sure; she just knew that every minute felt like an hour, and every hour a whole day. Sleep had eluded her for half the night, it seemed, and even when she did manage to fall into a fitful doze, she was haunted by nightmares of being chased, or worse, being trapped in a dark room with no windows and no doors, where she beat on the walls and screamed until her voice failed her, but no one ever came to answer her cries for help.
Even judicious use of her lip and cheek stain only barely kept her looking like death warmed over the next morning. Luckily, Clara was chattering away about the piece of land Elias had just bought, and the house he planned to build on it — the intimation being he would propose in the very near future —
