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Judging by the spiderwebs of cracks on the left hand side of the mirror, some past occupant of this motel room must have punched it. Lucy could understand completely. All a person did when they punched a mirror was hurt themselves, everybody knew that, but in some situations the anger, exasperation, all varieties of negative emotion overwhelmed completely and it could not be helped. Places like this were magnets for situations where emotions ran high. And situations where emotion was not present at all.
The reflection in the shattered part of the mirror was like a fraught kaleidoscope with the image spinning in all directions. So anyone who did not notice the man standing directly behind them could be easily forgiven. He was the first person to wind up broken hearted in this particular room, and he could only be seen through the cracked part of the mirror. Lucy did not register him. Not consciously at least. The hair on the back of her neck recognized him. Her past left her more sensitive to this sort of thing than she ever could have wanted no matter how hard she tried to ignore it. No matter what she did to try to ignore it.
Despite not seeing the man with her eyes she was still utterly horrified when she looked in the mirror, albeit for a far more mundane reason. Her hair was long. For a moment Lucy thought she was looking at Nell instead of herself. The only other times Lucy had made that mistake she was looking at old photographs.
As little girls there was no physical characteristic to distinguish them. One of them might as well have been nothing more than a reflection of the other. Yet no one in the family ever mixed them up. Not in the moment at least. Sometimes when looking back even Lucy was not sure who was who. A good amount of her childhood memories could have plausibly belonged to Nell in actuality. As the years passed and it became harder and harder for strangers to even notice a resemblance the essential quality that divided them in those early years grew more and more obscure.
Lucy started cutting her hair short when she was fourteen, an action that horrified Aunt Janet and earned the approval of Theo. She had not meant it as a grand statement or rebellion. In all honesty, she did not realize it would be that big of a deal. It was just that she thought she would like it that way.
Looking at Nell for the first time after she cut her hair was almost enough to make her regret it like Aunt Janet insisted she would. The fact that they were no longer exactly the same finally sunk in. With the scissors Lucy cut off her own hair in front of the bathroom mirror she had unwittingly severed something integral. She could see the tension leave Nell’s shoulders, and that told her that maybe it was a connection they needed to lose.
Nell smiled, “Looks great!”
That was the first time Lucy ever wanted to kiss Nell. Maybe this desire already resides somewhere deep and unexamined within Lucy’s heart, but Lucy had never known how to truly love herself, so this was the first time she had noticed. The impulse was gone almost as soon as it came. It was exactly not that Lucy stopped wanting to kiss Nell and more that she became confused about why she would want such a thing.
Nell maintained eye contact with her throughout this whole thought process, and Lucy was terrified she might know what was running through her mind. Lucy would have been concerned about that even if Nell were in another room or on the other side of the globe. If Nell knew she never gave any indication, she just kept smiling.
So Lucy had kept her hair short ever since. When times were bad she cut it herself just like that first time. When things were good… she still often wound up cutting it herself but she was more inclined to visit an actual salon or barbershop and babble about problems that did not remotely resemble her actual demons.
Except apparently right now, she had not kept her hair short. This was a shocking revelation because last she remembered her hair was as short as it had ever been. Then again the recent stretch of time had been a blur. She could not remember checking into this motel room or the name of the nude woman passed out on the bed. What day was it? No, more important question: what month was it?
That was the moment Lucy realized she had a problem. This was not the first time she had come to that particular realization. Each time she had this revelation it shook her to her core. Despite the fact that it was the exact same feeling that inspired her to turn her life around every time, it still felt like something new. Maybe that was because there was the hope that this could be the attempt that actually sticks the landing.
An insignificant twenty-four hours later Lucy found herself standing over Nell’s bed. Her state of mind was far too desperate and jagged to care about things like the locks on the door. She could already feel the shame that would shadow this moment years down the line but she could not bring herself to care. The nerves of knowing she would have to be sober soon and the need to have Nell by her side took up the highest importance drowning everything else out.
It would be a lie to say that Nell was particularly beautiful as she slept. Ever since Hill House whenever Lucy saw one of her siblings sleeping her heart screamed for them to wake up. If she could not have that then a place next to them in eternity would be enough. Nell was no exception.
She was about to reach down to her shoulder to try to shake her awake, but the moment she bent her neck to the side Nell’s eyes snapped open. In the morning Nell would be all smiles. She would cut Lucy’s hair off herself before dropping her off at rehab. But in that moment all that existed in Nell was the purest of terror and dread. Lucy could see that she wanted to scream but was utterly paralyzed and it broke her heart. In the morning Nell wanted to kiss Lucy goodbye but held herself back with shame and the memory of fear. If Lucy would have seen that maybe it would have broken her heart.