The Blood Bank Daughter

Chapter 3 Erasing Myself

After I signed the DNR, I stopped giving Chloe the reactions she wanted.

The Croft mansion did not become kinder. I simply stopped trying to turn each insult into evidence that I belonged there.

She put out a foot on the stairs, one of her favorite tricks. I stepped over it. The next day she spilled coffee on my last clean shirt and waited for a fight.

I changed into a worn gray sweater. Chloe followed me to the door, asking why I had nothing to say.

For almost three months, her games got louder and my answers got shorter.

Arthur watched me eat a small dinner one evening. When I kept the food down and left without speaking, he gave an approving nod. My silence suited him.

One week before my body gave out, I began clearing my room.

I waited until the house settled each night, locked my door and worked beside the low fire. The staff never asked why smoke lingered in the upstairs hall.

I started with my school texts and the few novels bought with saved pocket money. Pages curled in a metal wastebasket on the stone hearth, then collapsed into ash.

Some pages carried notes from classes I had hoped would lead me out of the house. I fed those to the fire with the rest.

The doorframe came next. I had marked my height there on every birthday for ten years, faint pencil lines hidden beside the molding.

Each mark had a date in tiny writing. I had made them alone, standing on my toes to reach the newest line.

I used soap and a wet cloth until the wood turned raw. The marks disappeared one after another.

Last came the candy wrapper.

Its colors had faded, and the plastic had gone soft along the folds. I read the words I had written on the back: *Don't die. You're still useful.*

I held it over the embers. The wrapper tightened, blackened and dropped into the ash.

A few days later, I had enough strength to walk to the old church in the village. The few dollars in my pocket bought a cheap lucky charm made from a woven knot.

I rested twice on the road back. By the time I reached my room, the knot was damp from my palm.

Back in my room, I took Arthur's favorite cashmere coat from the valet stand. He wore it whenever the weather turned cold.

With a needle from an old sewing kit, I opened the inner lining near his heart. My hands shook, but I secured the charm and closed the seam.

I matched the old stitches one by one until the opening disappeared. Arthur would never know it was there unless the lining tore.

It was the last thing I would ever give him.

A wet cough bent me over the coat. When I pulled my hand from my mouth, blood covered my palm.

Several drops landed on the white dress laid across my bed, the dress I had chosen to die in.

The cotton had been clean and plain, the only dress in the closet that still fit my thinner body. I left the drops where they fell.

Three days remained.