Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Put him up to it?
Moisture bleared in his eyes, and in discomfort, he shuffled on his feet, trying to fight the hurt that blazed across him like the strike of a leather belt.
“Tell me, Silas. You’re not going to get into trouble. I just need to know.”
“He made me.” He hated that he sounded like a sniffling little baby when he said it, but he couldn’t help it. Couldn’t help the icky feeling that slicked through his veins.
“Because I’m like him,” he whispered like a horrible secret.
His mom took him by the outside of the arms. “You are nothing like him. Nothing.”
She almost shook him as she wheezed the last.
“You are kind and good and care about those around you. You love, Silas. You love with every cell inside this body, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve got his blood, you’ve got Silas’s heart.”
She said it as she set her hand over the thunder of it.
“It’s your heart.” The words gushed out of him. She was who he wanted to be like.
Tears blurred her eyes, the soft green sad. “No more of this, baby. It’s done. It’s over.”
He wanted to ask her what that meant, but she suddenly shot upright, taking his hand again, glancing both ways before she darted them across the tree-lined street to where their minivan was parked on the opposite side.
Confusion bound him when he saw that Meems was sitting in the front passenger seat, and when his mom ripped open the sliding back door, his brother and sister’s car seats were both buckled onto each side of the middle row with an empty spot left right in the middle.
There was no place to sit in the back seat since the whole thing was stuffed with their things.
“Get in, baby,” his mother whispered.
His nerves scattered.
Excitement and relief and more of that confusion as he tried to process exactly what was happening.
“Hi, Sigh-us, my brover!” Brody kicked his tiny feet as Silas squeezed by to get into the middle, and he could barely return a, “Hi, buddy,” around the lump in his throat as he settled into the middle.
On the opposite side, Elena reached around her car seat, a big smile on her dimpled face as she gripped at his arm. “We’re goin’ to Meems’s house.”
His heart felt like it was going to explode, and his grandmother shifted around to give him a soft smile. “That’s right. We’re going to Meems’s house.”
Bewildered, he met his mother’s gaze through the rearview mirror.
He thought he was going to be grounded forever.
Or maybe his dad would have been the one to give him his punishment, even though his mom never told him when he was in trouble so that wouldn’t happen. Still, his dad didn’t seem to care that much about it when he found out, that was, if he was even around.
But instead, his mother said, “And we aren’t coming back.”
TWENTY-TWO
BRINLEY
“Come on, Dereck, we have to hurry.” Brinley grabbed his hand as he scurried out the school gates, their feet rushed as she led him down the street.
“How was school?” she finally asked.
“Fine,” he muttered.
“What did you get on your math test?”
He sent her a grin. “I only got five wrong.”
“Out of how many?”
“A hundred.”
“That’s a good job. A really good job.”
“Only because you helped me study.”
They’d spent two hours working on it yesterday afternoon.
They rounded the corner and rushed across the street, traveling the four blocks to get to their house.
The exterior was worn and the lawn overgrown.
She inhaled a steadying breath, knowing she’d have to do something about that.
She rummaged through her backpack and got out the key.
Turned it in the lock and let them inside.
“Take off your shoes,” she instructed Dereck as they both dumped their things onto the scroungy linoleum floor.
He didn’t listen, just ran through the house leaving a trail of mud.
Frustration ballooned in her chest, but she tried to remember he was just a kid. He didn’t think not to bang the cabinet doors or climb all over the furniture.
Besides, she had worse things to worry about.
She crept down the hall. The door was ajar by an inch. The same way as she left it this morning.
Her heart sank, and she had to steel herself before she finally pushed open the door.
Her mother’s eyes were closed, but they barely fluttered open to the sound of her. “There’s my girl.”
She spoke so quietly Brinley could barely hear it. The words croaked and uneven.
Brinley tiptoed up to her side, put the back of her hand on her forehead like her temperature was going to make any difference.
“How are you feeling?”
Her mother forced an ashen smile, her lips a cold, weathered gray. Her head that once had boasted the same brunette curls as Brinley’s was now bald, her body wilting away beneath a green striped bedspread.
“It’s not so bad today.”