Chapter 9: Clear

The world snapped into focus.

I stood in the cottage doorway and saw individual leaves.

I saw the grain in the wooden step and a spider hanging in the corner of the porch.

I had not seen a spider in eleven years.

I started to laugh, and then I was crying.

The sky behind the trees was streaked orange and pink, and every cloud had an edge.

The cracked mirror in the hall showed me a stranger with brown eyes and a startled mouth.

"Hello, me," I whispered.

I had no business being happy.

But I walked across the lawn with the sun on my face, counting blades of grass.

The Hall rose ahead of me, gray stone with a hundred windows, ivy and chimneys and a slate roof going gold.

It was beautiful.

I was almost glad Roake had given me the glasses.

I went in by the side door.

I wanted to tell them.

I wanted to find Jasper and say I can see your sunglasses, all forty-one, and Goldie, and the dress, and Ambrose.

I wanted to see Ambrose's face.

I pushed open the door of the drawing room, and Jasper was standing by the window with his back to me.

"Jasper!" I said.

He turned around.

He had no sunglasses.

He had eyes.

They covered his face and his throat and the backs of his hands.

There were hundreds of them, golden and round and rimmed with lashes.

Every single one blinked at me, one after another, in a slow ripple.

And all of them were wet and terrified.

I heard someone scream.

It took me a full second to realize that it was me.

"Winnie," Jasper said, and his mouth opened, and there were eyes on his tongue. "Winnie, wait..."

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