Page 1 of Offering Herself to Darkness

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NORA

“I’m sorry, Ms. Thompson, but I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do.” Doctor Patel shook his head gravely and Nora felt her heart sink.

“But surely there has to be something—some therapy you haven’t tried. Some experimental drug trial I could get Anna into,” she protested.

He shook his head again.

“I’m afraid that Pulmonary Crystalosis is still such a new and rare disease we just don’t have many tools to fight it with. And your daughter—or is she your niece?”

“She’s my niece but I adopted her when my sister—her mother—died,” Nora said tightly. “So yes, she’s also my daughter.”

“Well, as you can see, the PC has spread throughout Anna’s lungs.”

Dr. Patel pointed to the light board where Anna’s latest X-rays hung. The darker shape of her small, bird-like chest enclosed two lighter lungs. And growing in each of the lungs was what looked like a delicate, crystalline tree with spreading branches. The one on the right was barely a sapling but the one in the left lung had blossomed into a beautiful tree in full bloom.

Beautiful and deadly, Nora thought bitterly. Anna’s X-ray looked like a work of art but it was a harbinger of her eventual doom.

No, I can’t think that way—I can’t. There must be a way to save her! I can’t lose her, not after what happened to Cora!

Cora had been Nora’s identical twin—and her opposite in every way. Nora was a paralegal with a buttoned-down nine-to-five job, a 401K, and a boring but stable relationship. Or she had been in a relationship until The Crash, anyway—which was how she thought of the accident that had taken her sister’s life. But that was a whole different story.

Cora had been beautiful and reckless—a free spirit and an artist. In short, everything Nora was not. She had no idea who Anna’s father was—and she didn’t care either, despite how scandalized their mother had been when she announced she was pregnant and keeping the baby. She’d dragged her daughter around the world on various adventures as she designed dresses and outfits for famous fashion influencers and lived the life of an itinerant artist.

Nora didn’t know where her sister had gotten her artistic flair. She herself couldn’t even sew a button on straight and her usual wardrobe consisted of modest gray and black skirts with plain button-down shirts and low, sensible heels. But despite their differences she had loved her twin sister fiercely and that love extended to her niece.

Anna had been only five at the time of The Crash. She had cried nightly for her mother and Nora had done her best to hold her and reassure her that everything would be all right, even though she felt broken inside herself. Even though they had rarely seen each other, she and Cora had texted and Face-timed multiple times a day—she felt lost without her twin.

Gradually, Anna had gotten through the worst of her grief and settled into her new life with Nora. Luckily, Nora lived close to her mother, who was able to help out by picking Anna up after school. Anna loved spending time with her “Grammie”—the two of them made cookies and watched Disney movies together.

Nora had gotten used to being a single mom too. She’d been in a stable relationship for five years prior to The Crash, but Cora’s death changed all of that. After she’d been granted sole custody of Anna, her fiancé Steve had decided he didn’t want to be a dad.

“We agreed not to have children—no kids, that was one of our core relationship goals,” he’d pointed out after the funeral when Anna was asleep in the other room—his office, which he disliked giving up, even for a little while. “You can’t break the agreement and expect me to go along for the ride.”

Nora didn’t give a damn about their “agreement” at that point. She was still grieving for her beautiful, erratic, artistic sister who she’d lost in an instant, and trying to find a way to make a life for her niece.

“Fine—go,” she’d said dismissively.

Steve had looked at her with wide, shocked eyes.

“So that’s it? You’re telling me to get out? We’re supposed to get married in two months! The venue’s already booked…the cake is ordered…the guest list?—”

“I don’t give a damn about any of that,” Nora snapped, rounding on him. “Right now my priority is Anna. If you don’t want to help me raise her, then fine—you can go.”

“But what about your mother?” Steve protested. “Why can’t she raise the kid? She’s retired after all—she has plenty of time.”

“My mother is getting older and she’s frail—she can help watch Anna after school but she can’t take her full time,” Nora told him. “Besides, I love Anna—she’s all I have left of my twin! Of course I’m going to raise her, not try to pawn her off on someone else. Cora left her to me—she’s mine now and I take care of what’s mine.”

Steve had given her a disgusted look.

“Well then I guess I’m out, just like that,” he said. “If you can’t see reason, I’m not hanging around to raise someone else’s kid.” His voice changed and became wheedling. “C’mon, babe—what about the honeymoon trip we were going to take? What about Thailand and?—”

“You can go by yourself. Or find someone else to go with you,” Nora cut him off. “I won’t be going anywhere for a while. I have a five-year-old who can’t understand why Mommy isn’t coming home and I’m not about to leave her and go waltzing off to Thailand with you just because you don’t like kids.”

Steve must have seen the finality on her face because he’d slammed out of the apartment without another word. He’d come back a few days later to pack up his things and Nora hadn’t heard from him since.

Of course, he’d taken their honeymoon trip to Thailand without her and posted multiple pictures of himself having a great time on social media with lots of skinny women in bikinis, but she no longer cared. It had taken her sister’s death to see what a shallow, self-centered jerk her former fiancé was and Nora was of the opinion that she’d dodged a bullet when she’d broken up with him.

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