Page 9 of Austen Persuaded

My phone buzzed.

Jacqueline

Anastasia? You need to get better. I am losing my patience, and you know I’m usually the most patient person.

What the heck? How does Mom know I’m sick?

Annie

Apparently you’re aware I’m sick. I can’t control that, Mom.

Jacqueline

I had to get in contact with your roommate, the flamboyant one. He told me you have the sniffles or something. You always wereso melodramatic.

Annie

That’s offensive, Mom. You know Rafael’s name.

Jacqueline

It’s immaterial. I need you to help me find a position for Caroline in St. Paul. She’ll be finishing her residency soon, and her husband wants to move there for some odd reason.

Annie

Who is Caroline?

Never mind. I’m not doing this now. I’m sick. This can wait.

I saw another new text notification but shut off the phone screen before I could read it, placing the phone back on the nightstand.

Burying myself back under the covers yet again, I waited for the tears to fall. I needed to cry, didn’t I? What a pathetic state I was in, what a terrible week this had been. But I couldn’t feel. My eyes were as dry as my newly pressed top sheets.

When had I ever been so steeped in misery that I couldn’t even cry? I had always been an expressive person. I was always—

Well, exceptthen.

The other time, when there were no more tears left. No more booze. No more pills. No more love. No more anything, except numbness.

It was emptiness.

It was life without him.

It was life without us.

The biggest mistake of my life.

A life, now empty.

All empty, all agony.

No hope.

But it can’t be agony if it’s numb, right?

I pushed the searing, long buried thoughts aside and focused on the large ceiling tiles above me, meditating on their dull white pattern. I turned to my side, pressing my cheek into the pillow and giving in to the bleakness of dry eyes, of having nothing left to feel.

Or nothing I had to acknowledge.

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