Her hair was scraped into yesterday’s ponytail and held together with dry shampoo and pure will.

Beneath her eyes were two deep bruised hollows.

She looked, I thought, like someone who had been slowly bled.

Chapter 6 — The Woman I Used to Be

I stood in front of that mirror longer than I should have, because I was looking for someone underneath the stranger.

There had been, not so long ago, a different woman in this body.

A woman who wore heels to late dinners and put on crimson lipstick just to carry the trash to the curb, because it made her feel like herself.