Chapter 1

My grandma lived in the dark for forty years. She wasn't born blind.

It happened back in 1948. Grandpa brought his new wife home, a woman from the city. She shoved Grandma hard. Grandma fell face-first into a pot of boiling hog slop on the woodstove.

From that day on, Grandma couldn't see, and her face was covered with burns. They dragged her up the mountain, shut her inside a crumbling dirt shack, and left her there. For twenty years, nobody came.

I was the granddaughter she raised with her own two hands.

In my previous life, I tried to fight back.

At fifteen, I walked down the mountain to find work. My uncle caught me and broke my leg.

At eighteen, I made it to town and begged somebody to take me in. I had no ID, no papers, nothing. Nobody wanted a girl with no past and no future.

That winter when I turned nineteen, Grandma couldn't hold on any longer.

She died with a yellowed scrap of paper gripped between her fingers. Crooked letters were scratched across it: [Sophie, go down the mountain.]

She'd been blind for twenty years. I never knew how long she'd spent practicing those words.

After she was gone, I stayed in that shack and went numb. The years slid by like slow mud, and I died on the same straw mattress where she once lay.

Now, I was thrown back. I was nine years old. And this time, I was getting Grandma down that mountain myself.

*****

The shack was always dark. Sunlight never touched it. When I opened my eyes, the back of my head was pounding.

I reached up and felt something wet and sticky. It was blood.

I knew from my old memories what had happened. My aunt had swung a cast-iron skillet at me.

The reason was simple. I had taken half a biscuit she'd left on the porch rail.

It wasn't that I wanted to steal. Grandma hadn't eaten in two days.

The winter wind cut through the gaps in the plank walls. Frost clung to the dirt floor in patches.

Grandma was curled up in the corner, buried in a pile of old feed sacks, clutching a quilt so patched and worn I could barely tell what the original fabric had been.

Her lips were blue, and she was so thin she looked like a bundle of dry twigs.

She heard me stir and reached toward me, her hands searching the air.

Her eyes were hollow, but her fingers moved across my face, inch by inch. When they found the blood matted in my hair, they jerked back.

"Sophie, did they hurt you again?" Grandma asked.

I took her hand and held it tight. It was cold as ice.

Her knuckles were swollen and rough, her nails caked with dirt, and the calluses on her palms were hard as stone. These were hands that hadn't seen sunlight in forty years.

In my previous life, I grew up holding those hands, but I never once dared to think about walking her off this mountain.

It wasn't that I didn't want to. Every time I tried to stand up, I got knocked right back down.

At fifteen, I gritted my teeth and headed down the mountain to find work washing dishes or mopping floors in town.

My uncle, Charles Miller, caught me at the edge of the village. He didn't say a word. He swung a hoe handle and snapped my left leg.

He snapped, "You little curse. Trying to shame this family? If you ever let anybody outside know we kept you locked up on this mountain, I'll put you in the ground."

I dragged my shattered leg back to the shack. Grandma's hands trembled as she felt the break. Her lips quivered all night, and she couldn't speak a single word.

At eighteen, my leg had healed enough, so I slipped off to town again.

I begged the diner owner, the tailor, the old man who swept the church steps. Not one person would take me in.

I had no ID, no birth certificate, no proof I was a real person at all.

I stood on the sidewalks of town all day until somebody from the village spotted me and hauled me back.

That time, nobody laid a hand on me. But it cut deeper than any beating ever could.

Because that was when I understood grit and courage weren't enough.

The doors in this world wouldn't swing open because I wanted them to. I needed a key.

And what was that key? It was education, a birth certificate, a name the law recognizes, those official stamps and words on a piece of paper.

Back then, I had none of that. So no matter how hard I fought, it added up to nothing.

But this time? Everything was different. I came back carrying every memory from the years before.

I knew which wild greens grew on which mountain slopes. I knew which back roads led to which farm stands where people traded under the table.

I knew the county was launching new programs in a few years, grants and tuition help for poor kids trying to get to college.

I knew who I could count on, who would sell me out, who might lend a hand, and who would sink a knife in my back the first chance they got.

I couldn't push open the doors before. This time, I'd break them down with my own two hands.

"Grandma," I whispered, putting my lips close to her ear. "Let me take you down the mountain. Okay?"

Her hand clamped onto my wrist, holding tight.

Her dry, cracked lips moved. Her voice came out rough, barely above a breath. "Down the mountain?"

"Yeah, down the mountain," I said. "We're leaving this place, and we're never setting foot on it again."

Grandma stayed quiet so long I thought she wouldn't answer.

Then she lifted her sightless eyes toward me.

"Sophie, I'll only slow you down," she said. "You go down the mountain on your own. Don't let me drag you under."

I gripped her hand as hard as I could. "No, Grandma. We walk out of here together, or we go into the ground together. Those are the only two ways this ends."