Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 66732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66732 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 222(@300wpm)
I grab my wallet out of my pocket, don’t even count out the cash but put the wad of it in the locked offering box before lighting a candle for Mom. It can’t hurt.
I take a moment, my throat doing that thing again, making it fucking hard to swallow. To breathe. It’s the only lit candle in the place. Apart from Father Emiliano and his sister, no one comes here anymore. I try not to think about that, about her being alone up here, and walk back outside.
I go to the edge of the cliff to the stone marking Mom’s grave. It’s a kneeling angel, wings spread wide, head tilted down, watching over her. She always said angels were everywhere, watching out for us.
The fact that Sly Fox was my father did not support her claim, but she’d shush me any time I said it. Any stray feather she found on our doorstep, she’d pick up and keep, telling me an angel had visited our front door.
I still have every one of those feathers tucked away at home.
I bend to brush away snow that’s settled over the carved letters of her name and there, on the knees of the angel, is a pristine white feather. I pick it up. She’s an angel now too, watching over me. It’s what she’d say.
I pocket the feather and harden my heart by remembering her life.
Esmerelda Cruz had the misfortune of meeting Sly Fox when the cleaning service she worked for sent her to fill in for one of his regular staff. She was a beautiful woman, my mother, with her long dark hair, olive skin, and those black eyes.
She was also barely seventeen.
Knowing Fox like I do, I can guess it took just one look at her for him to decide he would have her. Period. The end. It didn’t matter that he’d ruin her. The adulterer was engaged to Mira when he decided to take my mother to his bed. She was ten years younger than Mira Fox, but she was clever—cleverer than he expected, is my guess, because when she got pregnant, she didn’t run away or disappear, like he wanted.
She stayed put and made him pay in exchange for not announcing the fact that he’d bedded and impregnated an underage girl. If anyone had any doubt I was his son, all they had to do was take one look at me. I hate the fact, but it is that. Every time I see my eyes in any reflection, it’s like Sly Fox is looking back at me.
The wind picks up.
“All right, all right, Mom. I’ll stop.”
I stand still for a long, long minute, and I hear my mind reciting a prayer she taught me when I was little. It’s not conscious, but there it is. When I’m done, the wind grows quieter, quiet enough that I imagine I can hear the waves crashing far below.
“I miss you. I hope you’re okay wherever you are,” I tell her.
I turn to go, my throat closing again. I walk back to the SUV, take a deep breath, and get in before heading to The Sinistral where in my penthouse suite, Cecilia will have ordered a bottle of whiskey to be waiting for me. I will drink every last drop and forget having seen Ophelia. Forget having held her, even for a moment. Forget how she felt in my arms. Forget the single tear that fell from her eye.
5
OPHELIA
Past
Swimming Lessons
Ilove water. I love wading into the sea or any pool—the bluer the better, the deeper the better, but I only ever stay in the shallows.
Technically, I can swim. I know how I’m supposed to move in the water, at least. Dad has insisted on lessons. Five years’ worth of them. But there’s something inside me that just won’t let me go deeper. I’m five-feet-four-inches now, and I won’t even swim out to six feet even though I know that if I were to go under and panic, all I’d have to do is kick off the bottom and I’d resurface. I know this in my head, but no matter what, I cannot get my limbs to move, to do what I know how to do as soon as I can’t feel the bottom.
It's weird. Everyone swims. It’s embarrassing.
“Phee,” Ethan says, coming up behind me and settling next to me at the pool. He hands me a beer, and I take it, although I don’t really want it. Sometimes I think he forgets I’m two years younger than him.
He taps his bottle to mine and takes a big swallow of his. I glance up at the top of my house, which I can see over the tall fence the Foxes had erected between the properties, and take a small sip. Dad would not like to know I was drinking a beer, especially around water, but I remind myself he’s not home. He’s out with the Foxes, and Tonia is visiting her sister in Portsmouth. Her sister has been going through a divorce and Tonia’s helping out, so she’s gone most weekends now.