The Other Side of Us - By Sarah Mayberry Page 0,31

pain and fear and she hadn’t been able to stop the tears from coming.

She winced as she hung the damp tea towel over the oven handle. Oliver must think she was a bona fide head case. She hadn’t had a single normal interaction with him since he arrived. If she were him, she would barricade the doors and windows and avoid any and all future contact with the crazy lady next door.

She trudged into the bathroom and squeezed toothpaste onto her toothbrush. The woman in the mirror had puffy, bloodshot eyes and a rueful expression on her face.

Well she might.

She brushed and flossed, then headed for bed. She stopped in her tracks in the doorway, pulled up by the sight of the twin indentations on her quilt. One for her, one for him.

God. What a ridiculous evening. The poor man.

Mr. Smith sniffed at her heels and she bent to give him a good-night pat before shutting him out in the hall. Then she changed into her pajamas, crawled into bed and tried to pretend that she hadn’t lost it spectacularly in front of the lovely, warm, kind man from next door.

Flashes of her own self-indulgent monologue came to her as she squeezed her eyes shut.

I need to know. I want to know now that it’s all going to be okay. I’m sick of taking it on faith.

He must think she was the worst sort of self-pitying sook—in addition to being emotionally unstable, of course.

His parting words came to her then.

What makes you think I’m in a position to judge anybody? Everyone’s got their own shit to shovel, Mackenzie.

At the time she’d thought he was simply being kind—continuing to be kind, really—but now she thought...maybe not. There had been a look in his eyes as he’d spoken, a sort of hard, lonely bleakness....

Something else he’d said slipped into her mind. It suited me to get away for a few weeks.

It occurred to her that maybe she wasn’t the only one struggling with a less-than-stellar life right now. The thought that she might not be alone in her messed-up state, that maybe she hadn’t made as big a fool of herself as she’d imagined, loosened the tense knot in her belly. Maybe, as Oliver had suggested, she was allowed to have a bad day occasionally.

Maybe—revolutionary thought—she could even afford to cut herself some slack.

It wasn’t exactly a philosophy she was familiar with. Everything she’d achieved in life she’d gained through hard work and determination. She’d attacked her recovery with the same zeal—every exercise a challenge, every milestone achieved a victory and a spur.

She had no idea how to turn off that part of herself. No concept of what it might be like to hold herself to a lesser standard. But maybe she needed to try, because, as she’d said to Oliver, she was so, so tired.

Tired of the constant fear she would never be able to reclaim her old life that sat behind her breastbone.

Tired of pretending to the world that everything was just dandy, that having her body torn apart had been a mere hiccup, a temporary hitch in her stride.

Tired of pretending to herself that she was still the same woman she’d been twelve months ago.

Would it be the end of the world if everything didn’t go back to being the way it used to be?

She’d never really asked herself that question. She’d been so busy trying to make it as though the accident had never happened. But maybe she should be thinking less about resurrecting the past and more about what the future might hold. Maybe it was time to stop trying to alter an irreversible reality and instead work out how to live with it.

A few days ago, the notion of moving toward acceptance and away from defiance would have felt akin to heresy. Tonight...tonight it felt timely.

* * *

MACKENZIE WOKE TO the sound of birdsong outside her window. As always, she started planning her day the moment her brain came online, allocating time to all the things she needed to do, making lists in her head. Breakfast, then she needed to ramp up her rehab exercises so she could return to her regular workload. She had three days of downtime to make up for, after all.

She also needed to do something about getting a job. She wouldn’t be fit for full-time work for a few months yet, but she needed to put her ear to the ground so she could find out who was where and what