Page 111 of The Manor of Dreams

“Rennie!” Lucille shrieked, her throat hoarse. “Renata!”

The door at the end. She just had to make it to the end of the hallway.

Another block of ceiling crashed down right in front of her.

Her sister was trapped.

She scrabbled her way up the wreckage. She slipped, and something stung her hand. She came away bleeding and saw a shard of the bathroom mirror on the ground, blood staining the edges. There was no way out now.

Lucille grabbed the mirror and held it between her hands.

“Ada,” she said.

The mirror was still.

“Ada,” she whispered.Please, please, please.

Slowly Lucille’s reflection flickered and her sister’s face appeared.

“Jie Jie?”

Lucille gasped. “Ada.”

She knelt over the shard of the mirror, over her sister’s shifting face.

“You need to go,” Ada said from the mirror.

“No,” Lucille shouted. Beyond her, the window shattered. She didn’t move. “I need to talk to you.”

“There’s no time.”

That’s why Ada had appeared so often, Lucille thought. She wasn’t trying to scare her or frighten her. She was trying to warn her.

That was why Ma gave away the house.This house that Lucille had fought for. Forced them to stay in. Ma was trying to save them all along. If only they’d left earlier—

“I can’t hold it anymore,” Ada said, her reflection flickering. “I’m—”

She was gone.

Ceiling drywall rained down around her. Lucille clenched the mirror in her hands. She could see the warped, severed pipes through the gaping hole in the wall. “No. No, come back—”

“She’s angry,” Ada repeated, back in view but nearly transparent now. “I can’t reason with her anymore. She’s stronger than I am now.”

Ada was better than Lucille could ever be. She only wanted to protect them. Had their roles been reversed that summer thirty-four years ago, Ada would have kept her secret about Sophie. She would have done anything for her twin sister.

“I’m not going,” Lucille sobbed. Her vision of her sister blurred with tears. “I’m not leaving you again.”

There was a pause. “Jie Jie—”

“I’m sorry,” Lucille whispered. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Prideful, stubborn Lucille knelt now on her hands and knees in front of her sister as the house collapsed around them. “I’m so sorry, Mèi Mei. For everything.”

The truth tore through her with her own jagged heartbeat.When what is false is taken for truth, true becomes indiscernible from false.Lucille left this house in denial, never thinking about what would have happened if she had let her sister confide in her. If she’d let Ada keep her secret, and not handed it right over to their mother with a turn of her wrist. An open book. What if she hadn’t scorned her sister’s happiness? Would Ada and Sophie still be alive?

This garden—Sophie—wanted her. She knew that she wasn’t going to make it out. But she was never meant to live this life without her twin sister. She’d been numb for the past three decades. From the moment she and Ada came into the world, they were together. They were the beginning and the end.

Lucille lost her footing and tumbled, gripping the mirror shard. Her head collided with the wall. Faintly, she heard shouts. She clutched the mirror to her chest, her sister. She could feel the vines wrapping around her, and she closed her eyes and let them take her.

RENNIEwoke, her mouth dry. She was being rocked gently, as if lulled into sleep. It was almost like the house wasswaying.Ink was bleeding across the ceiling.

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