The mirror appeared as darkly shadowed as always. Now that she stood before her reflection, the reason for her procrastination was evident. The set of her mouth and the drooping shoulders said it all. She was terrified of failing. Half of her clung to Aeryl’s notion: the last six months was a bubble of time and her arrival in Melbourne would match the moment she left. Just me on Harvey’s ramp in the middle of a panic attack. There’d be nothing to reproach herself with: no cirayla, no knowledge of the Gift, no infidelity.
The other half saw Mikey as a twenty-one-month-old toddler with no recollection of his mother, David sceptical, the house sold, her job gone, and her life in ruins. She inhaled and let out a shaky sigh. None of the stories she’d cobbled together for David were credible. G
