CHAPTER 8
I don’t know how long I stood there in our living room, watching the snow fall, my eyes locked on the house across the street, but it felt like a lifetime. A slow burn, it was a gradual descent, as if I’d stepped off the edge of a cliff and fallen not rapidly but steadily, sluggishly. And somehow that was worse. I wanted to hit the ground, needed the finality of it to come rushing up and demolish me, to end me right then and there and put me out of this misery in a rushing blur of violence and pain. Instead, I continued to fall for what seemed forever, the ground below never quite reaching me. A man hanged, dangling and choking, kicking against a rope that never quite tightened enough to finish the job. It was in those quiet moments of desperation and horror that I realized the
