Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83912 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“No.”
“Other family?”
“No.”
“Then you’re alone now, too.”
“Sweetheart, I was alone when that man was in the room.”
As was I with my mother, I think, memories trying to invade my mind that I do not want to revisit. I shut my eyes, inhaling Nick’s woodsy sent, losing myself in him. In sleep, I hope. And the shadows start to form. The darkness, too, but then suddenly, I don’t smell Nick any longer. That woodsy scent is replaced by flowers. So many flowers. Daisies. Roses. Lilacs. The scent of the Reid Winter Gardens. The scent of my mother that clings to my hair and clothes almost daily. I will my mind away from the place I sense it’s taking me. I fight a mental war I lose. I am back in time, living my tenth birthday.
My father has just picked me up from school, and we’ve returned to the mansion, and I cannot wait to find my mother, a drawing in my hand, a present for her, while my father has promised mine will come soon. I push through the doors leading to the garden. I drop my drawing and gasp when it starts to blow. I run and catch it, picking it up and staring down at the colors. So many colors. So many flowers. I’ve drawn my mother’s garden, and I know she will be proud.
With my prize back in hand, I rush to the gazebo where I always find her but stop short when I spy a tall, dark-haired man with her. “I told you not to come here,” my mother says.
“Return my phone calls, Meredith, and I won’t.”
“You do understand I’m married?”
He grabs my mother’s arm and pulls her to him. “I also understand you want me,” he says, and then he is kissing her, and I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. I turn away and start running, and just when I reach the door to the mansion, it opens and my father steps outside. And he’s big and tall and like a teddy bear that loves and loves, and I want to protect him like he protects me.
“Daddy!” I shout and fling myself at him, hugging him.
“Hey, honey. Did you find your mother?”
“She’s inside,” I say. “We have to find her. I need cake.”
He laughs and takes my hand, leading me to the mansion. “Let’s find her and have cake.”
My lashes lift, my eyes pierced by sunlight, and I blink away slumber with the sudden realization that Nick is gone. I jolt to a sitting position, pulling the blanket over my nudity, a ball of emotion I refuse to name in my chest. Of course he’s gone. Why wouldn’t he be gone? That ball in my chest expands, and I reject it, refusing to name it. Glancing at the clock, I’m appalled to discover it’s after nine. I have the rest of today here before I go back to the mansion, and I’m wasting it in bed, which admittedly was more appealing when Nick was in it, but I’m damn sure not letting today suck because of him leaving without saying a word.
Throwing off the covers, I walk into the bathroom and pull on my pink robe and shove my feet in my pink fluffy slippers. By habit, I brush my teeth and hair, and I note the smudges of mascara under my eyes. “No wonder he left,” I murmur. I look like the scary chick from that horror movie—The Grudge, or something like that. Only she had dark hair, meant to be goth and scary. At this moment, I’m a close second to her, though, for sure. I decide I don’t care, either. There is no one to care but me, and I just want coffee. And I think I might make me some gourmet pancakes my way. I need to stick to doing things my way. And bill collectors or not, I need to stop staying at the mansion. I need my space. I guess that is the gift Nick Rogers left me with.
Me again.
Or maybe that will turn out to be a curse, and I will in turn curse him for months to follow.
I walk back into the bedroom and note that he is, indeed, polite. He took our plates to the kitchen when he left. For some reason, that really irritates me. I walk into the living room, and my mind goes back to the dream, to my tenth birthday, and without a conscious decision to do so, I cross the living room and enter the library. Once I’m there, I walk to the bookshelf and pull out a worn brown journal and sit down on the chair beside it, opening it to pull out a piece of old, worn paper that was once balled up like one of the pieces of paper Nick used for paper basketball in my office yesterday.