Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 85224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85224 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
“Talia?” Alexei’s voice is closer now, and when I blink his fingers are on my face. Warm and strong. I don’t say anything, but I don’t need to. He seems to understand what I’m thinking, and I don’t like that. He is hesitant to leave now.
“I’m tired,” I tell him. “I want to lay down.”
He nods and pulls back the covers for me, helping me into bed. And then he pauses. His eyes on mine. My eyes are on his lips. Wondering if he thinks they are dirty now because I kissed him. Wondering what he sees when he looks at me the way he is looking at me right now. My fingers are moving over the star on my hand. Exactly the way he taught me to. He doesn’t miss it.
“I’ll be back soon,” he repeats softly.
And then he retreats.
I lay in the stillness of the house, waiting for the sound of the front door to close. In the time it takes the organ in my chest to beat sixty times, he is gone. And I’m staring up at the ceiling. Thinking of Arman. And the questions in my mind. The desire to know more of Alexei, and the emotions I feel rising to the surface the longer I avoid the thing that needs to be done.
Before I can really question what I’m doing, I move down the hall to his office. I know he has alcohol in there. I tell myself that’s what I’m seeking out.
I can hear Magda downstairs in the kitchen, and there is no sign of Franco. The door is open. All of the screens are off. And I step inside.
His scent still lingers in the space. The large oak desk is well worn, with lines that tell a story of who this man is. A constant companion over the years, it seems.
I sit down in the chair and glance at the drawers. They are all locked. One of the few things that poses no obstacle to me. I had a good teacher. A friend. A distant face that I think of sometimes, but pretend doesn’t exist.
Because it’s easier that way. It’s easier to die knowing that nobody cares.
I retrieve a bobby pin from my hair and go to work on the first drawer. It doesn’t take long for the skill to come back to me as if it were yesterday. When I was just a kid on the street. Always looking for my next meal. My next aversion to the constant well of pain inside of me.
The drawer yields nothing but a black notebook and some pens. Addresses, names, and a makeshift ledger with neat scrawls of penmanship across the blank pages. I put it back and move to the big drawer. The one on the bottom. A file drawer.
It opens. That organ in my chest beats again. Harder.
There are only two files inside. Two brown paper files.
My fingers hesitate to touch, but my brain demands answers. So I pick them up. Neither has a name. Or anything noted on the blank space where it should be. My mouth is dry when I glance at the door and open the first.
What I find is worse than I expected. More than I can handle.
The pages of my life. Summarizing my existence into a series of mercilessly blunt chapters. Birth certificate, health records. But worst of all are the photos of my family. Of my mother and my siblings. The newspaper records printed in black and white. And then the careless notes of the case worker who handed me off to anyone who would take me.
I keep flipping through the pages. Catching only words and fragments of sentences as they collide with images in the story of my life.
Murdered. Tragedy. Children. Monster.
Disappeared.
Then there are photos. My airway is choking the life out of me. I can’t breathe.
That little girl. It isn’t me. I don’t know her. That isn’t me.
Those faces. Four angels. My mother’s halo of hair in the bathtub, her eyes open and the only smile I ever saw on her face. My lips are singing the words as I examine the photos I never knew existed. Angels in the morning.
Crime scene.
My eyes are flickering open and shut, and my body is rocking back and forth in the chair. Footsteps move in time to the beat inside my head.
Muffled words. A curse.
And then a hand, reaching out to take what isn’t his to take.
I claw at the files, and he pulls. The paper rips, and pieces of my life rain to the floor. I’m on my knees, crawling around in a frantic effort to conceal them. He doesn’t deserve to see. He doesn’t deserve to know these things. And I don’t want to remember.
I reach for a photo just as a strong arm wraps around my waist. But it’s wrong. It’s all wrong.