Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69511 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69511 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
“I saw the video, baby.” He smoothed my hair out of my face. “I know what happened. When you jumped, they took her.”
I blinked. “She told me to jump.”
“I know,” he whispered, voice breaking. “I watched the video. I heard what she said.”
I looked down, my fingers playing with his shirt collar.
I was staring at the part in his shirt, comparing my tan skin to his white skin, and didn’t hear what he said next.
My eyes became focused on the red bloom of color just to the right of his shirt collar. The red started to spread, and soon it was taking over his entire shirt.
I wasn’t sure what I was seeing.
At least not at first.
My dad fell with me in his arms, and I banged my knees hard on the concrete.
When my dad fell, he landed beside my mom.
My mom had a red bloom forming on her forehead.
And all of a sudden everything started to make a sick sort of sense.
“Daddy!”
“I have you, Athena. I have you.”
I woke with a start.
The dream of my sister’s kidnapping, which had morphed again, was repetitive, but not consistent.
The ending, though, where my parents were shot?
That was real.
That always stayed consistent.
The therapists said that my changing dreams on how my sister was kidnapped was normal for a child so young.
According to my parents, the kidnapping did happen.
It just hadn’t gone down exactly the way I thought.
Gavrel’s face was soft when he reached for me, and I threw myself into his arms. “They’re d-d-dead.”
“They’re okay, sugar plum. I promise. They’re both still very much alive.”
“They were s-shot,” I disagreed.
“They were,” he agreed. “But they are okay now. They’re all better.”
I deflated in his arms.
“How was she taken?” I whispered.
I always asked him, and he always told me.
I tried to separate the dreams from reality, but sometimes it was so hard. I just needed a little reminder.
“Mom said y’all were playing outside near the wall. She had eyes on y’all the entire time. One second, she saw you and Mary Beth, and the next, y’all were gone,” he reminded me.
Mom, Dad and the authorities didn’t know how it’d happened—at least that was what they told me.
The kidnapping had taken place near an area that didn’t have cameras.
Some of the officers had suggested that maybe she’d fallen in the water like me and died.
But there’d been a sighting of her getting on a commercial airplane a few days later, and then nothing.
“I hate this,” I said to Gavrel.
He smoothed his hand along my hair. “We’ll find her one day, Athena. I promise.”
We would.
I wouldn’t stop until we did.
I am looking to rehome myself. I’m tired of adulting. I’m house broken.
—Athena’s secret thoughts
ATHENA
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The six-gun salute had me jolting with each blast of the gun.
“Ma’am.”
I looked up to see the assistant chief of the Dallas Police Department standing in front of me.
I blinked, wondering how I’d missed him walking up to me.
“This is for you,” he placed the flag in my lap. “I want to thank you, thank your brother, for giving it all.”
My brother had fought in the war in Afghanistan. He’d been to Pakistan and spent six months there.
He’d been to Kuwait, Japan, and Germany, all with his stints in the military.
He came home, joined the DPD, and died within a week of being out of orientation.
I was so lost.
My one constant in life… and he was just gone.
My mother, who was dead silent next to me, looked like she was a shell of the person she used to be.
A shell of the person she was before she and my dad had been shot with me in Dad’s arms.
I looked over at her and saw the scar on her forehead.
With that scar came her new recluse nature.
Honestly, I was surprised to see her out of the house.
She didn’t leave it much.
Just went to show how much she loved Gavrel.
I loved him, too.
He was hard not to love.
Me, however, I didn’t get the same kind of treatment.
I felt like my mother blamed me for my dad’s death.
I’d been there the night Mary Beth had been taken. In my mother’s eyes, I was the reason for her life changing for the worse. I was a constant reminder that she’d lost my sister, yet I still remained.
They slowly started to lower the coffin into the ground, and my breath hitched.
Alone.
I was so alone now.
“I want you to stop looking.”
I glanced over at my mother. “What?”
“Stop looking for your sister,” she whispered. “You’re the reason he was there. You had a hunch, so Gavrel went, like he always did.”
I felt her words like a slap to the face.
“He was at work, Mother.” I looked at her.
Was she really that out of touch with reality?
“The only reason he got a job there was because of you,” she accused. “He wouldn’t have come home if you hadn’t asked him to help you look for her.”