Jennifer POV
I didn’t know how long I’d been lying there, half-conscious, half-drifting, lost between the heaviness of grief and the strange, echoing numbness that followed true heartbreak.
The room was dim, curtains half-drawn, a soft lamp flickering somewhere behind me. The sheets smelled clean, steady, and expensive, but even that didn’t comfort me. My chest felt carved open. My head pounded with a deep, persistent ache.
Peculiar, my sister, my peculiar, wild, stubborn, irreplaceable Peculiar. Gone. Dead.
The word kept bouncing around in my head, but it didn’t sit. It didn’t fit. It didn’t make sense. Reality felt like a nightmare someone forgot to turn off.
My vision blurred again as fresh tears pooled. My throat burned from crying so long that I lost track of time. Every time I
