Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 561(@200wpm)___ 449(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
“Not yet. I’ve never seen him like this—so . . . lost. I’m almost not sure he won’t revert back to the Jeffrey I’ve known for most of my life, but he’s definitely all there. Brain acute as ever. He’s already begun to give instructions to do with his businesses. It’s only on this topic that he seems to rely on me.”
Elena remained shaken by that. Her father hadn’t relied on her for anything after those first years following Marguerite’s death, when he’d asked her to watch over Beth now and then so he could finish up work in his home office. Even that had been rare; she’d never minded, but he’d said he didn’t want her becoming a de facto caregiver for her younger sister. He’d hired a babysitter for Beth.
“Most of the time when we talk,” she told Raphael, “it’s just me and Jeffrey, but Gwendolyn’s been in the room a couple of times and she told me that he doesn’t talk to any of my sisters like that. Just me.”
“Because you were there.” Raphael’s voice was gentle, the way he’d lifted his wing against her back familiar and needed. “You’re the only one of his children who was not only there at the most devastating moment of his life, but you remember. You’ve said yourself that your younger sister has but a few fleeting recollections.”
“Looking back, I think Beth’s brain shut down to protect her. She was only six when we lost Ari and Belle, a bit older with our mom.” Elena’s heart filled with a rush of protective love, Beth forever the small girl with her hand gripping Elena’s as they stood at their mother’s graveside.
“She should have more memories, but she doesn’t. She told me once that all she has are what she calls ‘shadow memories’—faded and fuzzy images she can’t make out. I’m glad for her.” Never would Elena want Beth to suffer as she’d suffered.
All those night terrors.
All the echoing screams.
All the blood she couldn’t forget.
That swaying shadow against the wall.
The single high-heeled shoe on the tile.
Red. It had been a shiny poppy red against black and white tile.
A portrait of clean contrasts seared into her mind.
She thumped a fist against her heart, as if that would dislodge the old pain, make it fade away.
Raphael squeezed her nape. “So you see, you are the only person with whom Jeffrey can truly speak of this. I think, unlike you, he has not let anyone else that close.”
“While I have you and Sara.” Elena nodded in a jagged motion. “I’m pretty sure he’s never even really talked to Gwendolyn about the entirety of it. I saw the look on her face one day when we were discussing something—I can’t remember exactly what, but it was bad, and I had the sudden thought that she didn’t know. He’d never told her.”
“Has she ventured any views on the disinterment of your sisters?”
“Only once. Gwendolyn’s always been careful not to push her way into the past, into the life of the family we once had. I don’t know if that’s just how she is, her sense of boundaries, or if it’s because she’s protecting herself from being hurt.”
“Not from you.”
“No,” she said. “We barely interacted before I became involved in Eve’s life. The rare times we did, we were polite to each other—I never had any strong emotional response to her, positive or negative.” That had changed; Elena hugged her stepmother often now, seeing in her a new fragility born of the knowledge that Jeffrey had never loved her as he loved Marguerite.
“What did she say on the occasion she weighed in on the topic of your sisters?”
“She said, ‘If I were to die, and my children had already passed, I’d want to be with them, Ellie. Whatever the choice made for them, I’d want that to be the choice for me, too.’ ” Elena pressed her lips together. “My mother loved her girls.”
“But she also left you,” Raphael said, completing the words she couldn’t say.
“Most of the time, I think I’ve forgiven her, but then I get this hot bite of anger and I want to shake her, make her explain herself.”
Raphael stroked her wing, strong and warm and a man who’d never leave her of his own volition.
Leaning deeper into him, she said, “I think Gwendolyn’s right in what my mama would’ve wanted. And I think Belle and Ari wouldn’t only want the same, but that they’d far rather fly with her than lie in the earth.” Theirs had been a family full of freedom and sunshine, the cold dark foreign to them. “I won’t have graves to visit, but I barely do that now. I’ve always hated thinking of them in the ground.”
“Does Beth have a view?”
Elena smiled, her entire being awash in tenderness. “She’s being the baby sister and saying that she’ll follow my lead.” Her heart ached. “I saw strands of silver in her hair the other day.”