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"Stop it this instant!"

The girl picked up a large cerairl heaved it over her head and brought it down like so the trunk of a car Not a crack but a detonation: the vase exploded into awas happening, so final Lila knew this, just as she sensed, in a deeper layer of her brain, that all of this had happened before But the thought went no further; the hard edge of so books

"Go away!" she screamed "I hate-you-I-hate-you-I-hate-you!"

But as Lila watched herfro frorabbed the little girl around the waist and hoisted her off her feet The girl kicked and screarip All Lila wanted hat? To calet ahold of the situation? To silence the screah her brain? For every ounce of force Lila applied, the girl replied in kind, shrieking at the top of her lungs, the scene ballooning to grotesque di, their coravity tilted backward, and they went down hard, crashing into the dressing table

"Eva!"

The little girl was scooting away frolaring furiously Why wasn’t she crying? Was she hurt? What had Lila done? Lila approached her on her hands and knees

"Eva, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it "

"I hope you die!"

"Don’t say that Please I’ you not to say that"

And with these words tears cah not tears of pain, or humiliation, or even fear I will despise you forever You are not my mother and never were, and you know that as well as I

"Please, Eva, I love you Don’t you kno much I love you?"

"Don’t say that! I want Dani!" Her tiny lungs expelled an a amount of sound "I hate-you-I-hate-you-I-hate you!"

Lila cla would block the child’s cries

"Stop it! Please!"

"I-hope-you-die-I-hope-you-die-I-hope-you-die!"

Lila tore into the bathroo: the screa roar She fell to her knees, sobbing into her hands What was happening to her? My Eva, my Eva What have I done, to hts were swirling, tu; she was a million broken pieces of Lila Kyle spread across the floor

Because the girl wasn’t Eva No matter how hard Lila wished to host of the past The knowledge poured through her like acid, burning the lies away Go back, Lila thought, go back But she could never go back, not anys she’d done! The terrible, awful, unpardonable acts! She wept and shook She cried, as her father always said, stroking paint on his little boats, a river She was an abo was revealed to her, everything was of a piece, tiain in a reasse its history of shame

I hope you die I hope you die I hope you die I hope you die

Then so on the edge of the tub She had entered a state beyond volition; she chose nothing, everything was choosing her She opened the tap She dipped her hand into its current, watching the water flow through her fingers So here it was, she thought The dark solution It was as if she’d always known; as if, in the deepest recesses of herthis final act, over and over, for a hundred years Of course the tub would be the means For hours she’d sunk into its war immersion, its delicious erasure of the world, yet always it had whispered to her: Here I am Lila, let me be your last deliverance The stea the room with its moist breath A perfect calm encased her She lit the candles, one by one She was a doctor; she knehat she was doing Soy medico She stripped and examined her nad body in the mirror Its beauty-for it was beautiful-filled her withfrom the bath You areher hair to dry it and hugging her in the soft warmth of a freshly laundered towel You are the fairest in the land The recollections flowed through the water She was a child, and then a teenager, in her blue taffeta dress with a fat corsage pinned to the shoulder, each pictureinto the next until finally she beheld a wo before the own The bodice of delicate lace, the descending curtain of shi white silk: how her life in all its proe Today is the day I willdress was gone, replaced by a vaporous nightgown A h the s She turned and, in profile, cupped the voluptuous curve of her belly Eva That’s who you’ll be; that is who you are I will na, the tub nearly full

Brad, Eva, I a to be with you now

Three blue lines pulsed at the base of each wrist: the cephalic vein, winding upward around the radial border of the forear in the dorsal venous network before ascending the posterior surface of the ulnar side to join the venafroe with the cephalic at the back of the elbow She needed so sharp Where were the scissors? The ones Dani, and all the others who had come before, employed to trim her hair? She tried one drawer of the vanity and then the next, and when she ca with sharpness

But as this?