Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 109099 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109099 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 545(@200wpm)___ 436(@250wpm)___ 364(@300wpm)
At that moment, as I concentrated on the lights, something strange happened to me—something that hadn’t happened in a very long time.
My birthmark started to tingle.
It’s a weird shape, my birthmark—it almost looks like a tiny spider, no bigger than my pinky fingernail. The eight legs are no thicker than eyelashes and it sits at the top of my forehead, right under the point of my widow’s peak. I felt self-conscious about it when I was younger so I always wore bangs, but it had gotten lighter as I aged.
I tore my eyes away from the twinkling lights for a moment and pulled down my sunshade instead. It had a lighted mirror on the underside and I switched it on to study my reflection.
The narrow mirror showed a tired looking, middle-aged woman with gray streaks in her short brown hair. I hadn’t had the money to dye it in some time and it looked messy and unkempt.
I had bags under my brown eyes—which were bloodshot. It’s almost impossible to get good, restful sleep when you’re living in your car. You feel too vulnerable—anyone could look in and see you and decide you don’t belong and ought to be towed. Or worse, someone could break in and hurt you. I’d been sleeping with one eye open for weeks and it showed on my haggard face.
I used to be pretty.
The thought drifted through my mind like a sad little bubble. I still had the same delicate features—the cute little nose and full lips that Christopher had claimed he’d fallen in love with the first time he met me. I have slightly pointed ears too—he used to call me his “Little Elf.”
But now there was nothing left of my beauty—or my youth. It had all been used up—wasted on a man who threw me away like garbage the minute I was done raising his kids.
I tried to push the painful thoughts out of my head and concentrate on my birthmark instead. It was tingling more than ever—in fact, it was almost itching by now.
I moved my graying hair out of the way and leaned forward to stare at it. The tiny spider mark which had been so prominent when I was younger, had faded until it was almost the color of the skin surrounding it in the past ten years. But now it was showing again—it was bright red, in fact. What was going on?
I frowned as I poked it gently with one fingertip. My adoptive mother used to tell me that the birthmark would get red and inflamed from time to time when I was a baby. She said I would cry and cry when it did that and there was nothing she could do to comfort me.
Several doctors told her not to be concerned—that it was just a discoloration of the pigment, not anything serious like cancer. But she had worried about the mark all her life. Worried because nobody knew who my real birth parents were or what diseases or conditions they might have passed on to me.
“They found you in one of those Baby Boxes they have at the fire stations,” my Mom had told me, when I was old enough to hear the truth. “Someone left you there with a note and a beautiful necklace that your Dad and I have always kept safe for you. The note said, ‘Please take good care of this baby. She is very special.’ And so the firemen called the hospital and they checked you out and sent you to the adoption agency and that’s where Dad and I got you. We chose you out of all the other babies because that note was right—you are special, Lily, and don’t you forget it!”
I sighed as I remembered my Mom’s little speech. She and my adoptive Dad were both dead now—he from a heart attack and she from breast cancer—so I couldn’t call them up and talk about it. Or ask for a place to stay for that matter. What little they had left me had gone into the joint bank account that Christopher had closed. It was long gone anyway—spent on various things the kids needed. I wished I had saved some of it now, but of course it was too late.
As for the necklace—a gorgeous filigreed silver pendant with a purple stone in the center—well, that was one of the things that had been left back in the safe. And of course, though I had tried to contact Christopher, he had never gotten back to me. So that was lost to me too, along with…
“Ouch!” I gasped, jerked out of my morbid thoughts. The birthmark wasn’t just tingling now—it was burning. What was wrong with me?
I put a finger to the tiny mark again and it felt like it was on fire! I needed something to cool it down—some water or maybe just the cool night air.