Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69327 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 277(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
“Babe,” I called out when I finally realized that the house was too quiet. “Babe?”
“In here.”
That sounded…wrong.
She was normally bubbly and excited, but lately things had been a bit strained.
Her sister, Madison, had gone missing not too long ago. At first, they’d thought that she was just a sixteen-year-old runaway. But then my computer guy had done some digging at my request, and we’d found her on a website of all places. A website that catered to disgusting, vile men who wanted specific types of kids.
She’d been missing for ten days when we finally found her, in a brothel in the middle of Moscow.
She’d been broken.
And since then, Carissa had hurt for her sister.
Ready for anything at that point as I came around the corner to our bedroom, I was surprised to find my wife sitting on the bed, cross-legged, staring at the door as if she’d been waiting for me to come home.
“What’s going on?” I asked, my gaze going to the bathroom beyond.
There was water on the floor.
“I’m…well…” She looked hurt. “Why don’t you ask how I’m doing anymore?”
I thought about my answer, knowing my wife was a soft-hearted woman who needed care right now and not the blunt, honest truth, and said, “Well, I kind of know how you’re doing, baby. You’re sad for your sister.”
She looked down at her hands.
“I can’t do it.”
I moved closer, now seeing clothes on the floor in the bathroom.
Firstly, the water on the floor was quite the surprise. My wife kept an insanely tidy home, even with two toddlers running around.
Secondly, the clothes were even more of a surprise. She hated when clothes were left on the ground and wasn’t shy about telling anyone about her distaste for the act.
My gaze went back to my wife. “Can’t do what?”
“I can’t keep them in a world this vile,” she said, her eyes far away and oddly empty.
“Where are Joe and Judd?” I asked again, my heart pounding. “Are they with your parents?”
She didn’t answer, only stared at me with an unblinking expression on her face.
A sick sort of dread started to fill my belly at her words. “What?”
I again looked toward the bathroom, the chaos of just what I could see from the door concerning.
“They won’t ever hurt again.”
From the beginning, my wife had issues with postpartum depression. Though she was all happy and excited to be a mom on the outside, she struggled a lot after the birth. And though I’d done a lot of the child raising in the last eighteen months, I knew she’d turned the corner.
At least, I’d thought she had.
“Where are Joe and Judd?” I asked then, my heart pounding. “Are they with your parents?”
She smiled serenely, as if she no longer had a care in the world.
I moved woodenly into the bathroom, a sick sort of knowing entering my veins as I made my way into the large room.
The first thing I saw were the footed pajamas.
There were owls printed on them. Red and white ones.
Just like the one on the branch across my collar bone, sitting right next to the green and red one that matched the other set of pajamas.
I’m not sure why I’d done the owl.
Maybe it was the way Judd had loved the pajamas so much I’d had to find a pair in every size.
Maybe it was the way Joe pronounced ‘owl’ in the cutest little baby voice. More of an ah sound than an ow.
Whatever it was, I knew that the boys loved those pajamas. And I’d washed them last night and left them out on the bed for them to wear again tonight.
I did just about everything I could to help Carissa out.
So for them to be on the floor…
The water had soaked them.
They were on the ground soaked through.
“It was harder to do than I thought…” Carissa said quietly.
“Harder to…” I trailed off when I saw the two bodies floating in the bathtub.
Both of them were face down.
And so blue.
I didn’t think.
Before I could tell myself to move, I found myself diving headfirst into the bath to pull them up out of the water.
And I’d never, ever forget the way both of their bodies flopped around like dead weight.
Not something they even did in complete sleep mode.
“I can’t raise them in a world that has this kind of rot in it,” she breathed. “So I forced them to move on from this world. Where they would no longer suffer.”
• • •
“Keep talking,” Jareth said, his eyes filled with a knowing that I knew I wasn’t able to accept yet. “The longer she stays awake and aware, the better.”
She couldn’t turn her head with the way I was applying pressure. I moved so that I was lying down beside her. I had the palm of my hand resting against the other side of her face, and she attempted to lean forward so that she could be close without being too close.