Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 65871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 329(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 329(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
I stand in this moment, watching her chest, willing it to rise or fall. It seems to take an eternity for her to breathe. When she does, there is a slight rattle that makes my stomach clench.
She becomes aware of me. I do not know how. She opens her eyes and her head turns toward me. She is not old, but disease has taken her and made her sunken and sallow.
“Alexei?” Her voice is frail.
“Lilly.” I rumble her name, hoping that my relief is not too clear.
“You came,” she says, waving me to the chair at the side of the bed. I put the flowers down. Who cares about the flowers. I go to her bedside and I take her hand in mine.
“Of course I came.”
She smiles faintly. She is holding on, willing her body to stay breathing because she cannot leave this planet without knowing that the most precious thing to her in all this world is safe.
“Find Anya,” she says. “Please.”
“I’m going to find her, and I am going to take care of her. Do not worry. She’s going to be safe. I already have men on her trail. If they find her, they will bring her here.”
Lilly shakes her head faintly. “I don’t want her to see me like this.” She smiles at me again. “Thank you for coming, Alexei. Thank you. Thank you.”
“I would always have come. I wish I had come sooner.”
“Anya…” Her eyes close as she says her only daughter’s name.
“How old is she now, Lilly?”
“Nineteen.” She barely breathes the word.
Anya is old enough to make her way in the world, but Lilly is going to worry about her regardless, because that is what good mothers do, and Lilly is the best mother I know. Even now, fighting the clutches of death with every single breath, her daughter is all she cares about.
“Find her,” she rasps.
“I will. I promise I will.”
“You will.”
She smiles as she utters what are to be her last two words. My friend has held onto life long enough for me to be by her side, and now that she knows her daughter will be safe, I sense something in her relaxing. She is letting go.
I want to save her, but there is nothing that can be done. This is how life is. This is what will come for us all. Lilly is dying in comfort, with a friend, and knowing that her business in this world is as concluded as anybody’s can ever be. There is tragedy and there is peace, there is horror and there is grace.
I hold her hand until her fluttering pulse fades, and the quiet of the room becomes somehow even more solemn, rich, and deep. Something hallowed is happening. I can feel her with me one last time, a brush of a feminine hand on my shoulder.
The next moment she is gone. It is just a room again.
CHAPTER 2
Anya
“Chug! Chug! Chug!”
Beer is being poured down my throat, which I have opened to allow the fizzy forgetting juice to pour into me. I hate the taste of beer, but I love the way it feels once I have a buzz on.
This is a hell of a party.
I am having the best time.
I’m not technically old enough to drink, but nobody here cares about that anyway. Everybody at this party is an outcast one way or another. We don’t care about the law.
We’re in a shed in the middle of the Midwest. It smells like… well, to the casual observer, it probably smells like a bunch of wet dogs have been sleeping here. It looks like it too. I don’t care. The place is going to get more trashed before we’re done. Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
I was a good girl. I got a scholarship to a good college. I made all the right choices. I made my mom proud. And then I left home and… I guess I fell in with a bad crowd.
“Steve-P! Steve-P!” They are shouting someone else’s name now. Steve’s not chugging a beer. He’s doing something much more unsavory with a Christmas ornament. I don’t know what that guy’s fascination with sticking things up his butt is, but he seems to find the attention moreish. He’s not humiliated at all as he drops his trousers.
Outside the barn, there’s a grill with a few steaks on it. They’re for me and a few of the other girls. All the guys have theirs raw. I can’t stomach raw meat yet, no matter how many times they tell me it tastes better that way.
There’s a part of my mind that knows that this is an absolute dumpster fire of a situation, that I should be back at the college I dropped out of months ago. Pangs of guilt assail me, sharp even through the beer haze. My mom would be so disappointed if she knew I wasn’t going. I’ve been avoiding her calls because I don’t want to lie to her. I send a text sometimes, so she knows I’m alive.