She could feel it. Her precarious grip on her control was slipping just as obviously as if she’d been dangling from a cliff face and felt the rock skidding under her Þ ngertips and cutting into her skin. The more determinedly she tried to convince herself she was Þ ne, the louder the voice in her head screamed, “You’re losing your mind!” She felt wobbly and unbalanced, like her solid life had gone from being made of stone to being made of water and, try as she might, she couldn’t keep her Þ ngers pressed tightly enough together to keep it from seeping out of her hands and onto the ß oor with a messy splash. Things had been going so well. The past few weeks, she’d Þ nally started to feel like herself again, not some shell of the woman she’d been before Karen left. Losing Bentley had been a blow—to her identity as much as anything else—but she had picked herself up and trudged forward, hard as it had been, and for that, she was proud. She’d been learning to relax, to ease up, to take deep breaths every now and then.
