Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Her father’s eyes were striking. A crystalline gray with fine striations of a darker black. Normally remote and cool behind the lenses of his spectacles, today they were framed only by the white of his lashes and eyebrows. “Ellie.” His voice was gritty, his hand clenching again on hers. “My Ellie-belly.”
A sob caught in Elena’s throat.
Jeffrey hadn’t called her that since before the massacre in their home. At almost ten years of age, she’d begun to be embarrassed by it, that name he’d given her when she’d been a baby with a rounded tummy, and so he’d stopped. It wasn’t until this instant that she realized how much she’d missed hearing her papa say it.
“Yes.” She swallowed the lump lodged in her throat, so heavy and hot. “It’s me. You had a heart attack—that’s why you’re in the hospital.” No point sugarcoating things when that’d just annoy him.
He winced. “I remember that part.” Patting at his chest with a hand that held a line, a white strip of plaster sticking down the cannula, he said, “They cut me up?”
“Emergency surgery. Shall I get a doctor to—”
“No.” He tightened his grip on her hand. “No, Ellie.”
They just looked at each other, two people who’d been on opposite sides of an invisible border for over half of Elena’s lifetime.
“I dreamed about Marguerite,” he said at last. “She was in my arms and we were dancing in our kitchen. I could hear you girls playing outside and that yappy neighbor dog running around after you.”
Elena sniffed. “Romeo.” A miniature gray schnauzer, he’d belonged to an older couple and had too much energy to burn. Their home, with four energetic children who loved to play with him, had been his idea of heaven, and he’d often jumped the low fence to join them.
“Marguerite was laughing because I was joking about Romeo trying to find his Juliet, except that he was chasing the wrong species,” Jeffrey said. “I think it was half a dream and half a memory. I didn’t want to wake up.”
Face haunted by his love for a woman long dead, he said, “Do you think the afterlife exists, Ellie? Now that you’re an immortal?”
“Yes,” she answered without hesitation. “Angels can die, too—you saw that in the war. It just takes a lot more to make it happen. And I refuse to believe that we just end. I refuse to believe that Belle and Ari and Maman aren’t having the time of their lives beyond the veil we can’t pierce in life.”
Jeffrey looked away, staring fixedly at the window now blurred by water.
Elena didn’t rush him, well aware he was fighting to control his emotions. That was the thing with her father—he’d always had a hard time with emotion, even before everything went wrong. Marguerite had balanced him then, teaching him how to be soft, how to show his intense and protective love for his daughters without crushing their wild spirits.
“I put her in the ground,” Jeffrey said, still staring at the window lashed by the cold morning rain, the world outside yet night-dark. “She always said she wanted to be cremated, her ashes scattered, but I put her in the ground because I couldn’t let her go.” He turned then, met her eyes full on. “You hate me for that.”
So I can fly, chérie.
Elena took a shuddering breath on the echo of her mother’s long-ago words. “Hate isn’t the right word. I’m so angry with you for breaking that promise. You know what she was like better than anyone—she was a butterfly, a will-o’-the-wisp. She was meant to fly and you buried her in the earth. It haunts me, the idea of her trapped there.”
Jeffrey’s hand spasmed on hers. “You’re the only one other than me who remembers Marguerite, Belle, and Ari.” Rasping voice, his grip increasing in strength. “Beth was too young, has only faded echoes. To their friends, they’re a tragedy long in the past. Do you ever think about that?”
“Yes.” It hurt her heart to realize that one day she alone in all the world would remember a laughing dancer named Mirabelle, a kindhearted budding photographer named Ariel, and a woman of air and delight named Marguerite.
“Even though only we remember,” she said, “we don’t talk about them. You refuse to talk about them.” Anger threaded her voice, and she couldn’t stop it even though he was sick and in a hospital bed.
Her father didn’t rebuke her. “I was the first person to hold my Mirabelle when she decided to arrive in this world on her own timetable, and I was the first person to give my Ariel a bath. I was their father. I was meant to protect them. But I wasn’t there when it counted. I don’t deserve to speak their names.”
“Papa.” Elena let the tears fall now, her head bent over their clasped hands.