Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 66565 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66565 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 333(@200wpm)___ 266(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
I want to ask him if it really is just obligation that’s had him spending so much time with me or if it’s something else, if he sees me like a man sees a woman. If there could ever be something between us or if I’m going to be doomed to this hopeless longing forever.
But the moment is suddenly broken when the front door of Thornhill crashes open, slamming against the wooden frame of the house, and my father storms out.
“Where the hell have you been?” he shouts.
I stumble out of the truck. “Daddy, I’m so sorry, what’s going on?”
And…that’s when I realize he’s not talking to me at all. It’s Logan he’s shouting at. “My wife is dying and you have your cell phone turned off all day? What the hell is wrong with you?”
Dad gets right up in Logan’s face. “She’s turned and could be a matter of days if we don’t save her now and you’re off gallivanting with—”
A matter of days? Oh Mama.
Then Dad’s eyes turn disdainfully my way, looking me up and down. “And you would just abandon your mother like that? I thought I raised you to be a better daughter.”
His words cut to the quick and I flee towards the house.
“Daphne!” Logan calls after me but I don’t turn to look back. I have to see Mom. A matter of days. And I missed one of them, at the beach, being one of those idiot girls I hate, stupid about a boy who doesn’t even like me back.
Tears are rolling down my cheeks by the time I make it to Mom’s room.
And she does look worse than when I left her this morning. She’s got an oxygen mask on and her skin, it doesn’t look right. It seems papery and gray and like the veins are too close to the surface.
“Mama!” I cry, rushing to her bedside and crashing to my knees beside it, taking her hand. Her eyes are sunken and they move slow, like it takes her effort to even move them to look at me.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t here!”
But she shakes her head and motions for me to remove her oxygen mask.
“You need it.”
She frowns at me in that demanding way that is so Mom, I smile through my tears and do as she asks.
Her eyes soften but she looks so tired, a frail shell of her former beauty. “I’m glad,” her voice comes out a frail whisper. “I’m glad you went. Too much of your life,” she takes a heaving breath, “in this sick room.”
“No, Mom, all I want is to be with you.” More tears well and spill down my cheeks. Please, the last thing I want her to think is that she’s a burden. “You’re the best part of my life.”
She smiles at that and then lifts a wan hand to run through my hair. “A mother’s job is to send her daughter out into the world. To see her happy.” A big, heaving breath. “Not to hold her back like your father and I have all these years.”
I shake my head fervently. “You haven’t held me back. I’ve been so happy.”
“You will be. You will be. Live your life. For me. Swear you will. Swear it.”
I nod, trying to swallow back tears. “I swear.”
“Good,” she breathes out. “Because I want you to spend every day at the beach. To fall in love a hundred times. Or maybe just once with the right man.”
I can’t help lowering my eyes as my cheeks flush.
Mom squeezes my hand. “Oh darling. Logan?”
I open my mouth to tell her it’s just a stupid crush but when I look up, she’s beaming at me. “He’s a good man. And I see the way he looks at you. Like you hang the moon and stars.”
And then she relaxes back into the bed, her eyes closing. I suspect it’s taken more effort than I thought for her to say so much, but still she whispers. “I’m so glad. You’ll need someone strong to look out for you when I’m gone.”
I shake my head and start to chide her for negative thinking, but only her gentle snores meet me. She’s fallen asleep.
Her hand is cold in mine and when I feel along her arm and her feet, her entire body is cold. So I climb in bed beside her and nestle in behind her, chafing her arms lightly to warm her up.
“Everything’s going to be okay, Mama,” I whisper, terrified I don’t believe my own words. “Everything’s going to be okay. Daddy’s going to fix you, just you wait and see.”
But the next morning, when I wake up, it’s to the loud buzzing of machines alerting of a problem.
And my mother is cold in my arms.
Dead and gone from this world.
Sixteen
Present Day
Daphne
A huge dark shape moves over me in the darkness, then settles behind me, grabbing both of my wrists in one strong hand and holding them at the small of my back.