Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 85154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85154 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 426(@200wpm)___ 341(@250wpm)___ 284(@300wpm)
“You’re a nut!” I shout at her as she steps into her front door.
“I’ve been called worse!” she hollers, lifting her hand to say goodbye before closing the door. I don’t move from my spot, and for the life of me I don’t know why. It’s almost as if I don’t want to leave her, but I know it’s silly.
“She’ll call you if she needs anything.” I try to talk to myself as I finally turn around and head back to my car. Opening the driver’s door, I get in, looking once more at the front door. I don’t know if I’m disappointed that she’s not there waving or that she didn’t ask me to come back to her. I shake my head, trying to clear out all the thoughts I don’t want to have. “Snap out of it,” I say right before I pull off and head home.
Chapter Thirteen
Eva
The phone ringing has me blinking my eyes open. It takes me a minute to realize where I am. The fog from my sleep makes me close my eyes again. But the ringing makes me open them again. I reach out from under the warm cocoon of my blankets to grab it. “Hello,” I mumble, putting it to my ear and pressing it into the pillow.
“Are you still sleeping?” I hear Levi whisper, and I moan as I snuggle deeper into the bed.
“Couldn’t sleep last night,” I mumble to him, my eyelids feeling like they weigh a hundred pounds. “I think I fell asleep at four in the morning.”
“I hate to say this but,” he talks, and my eyes open, suddenly afraid at what he has to say, “it’s, like, nine o’clock.”
I go from lying down to sitting in the matter of a second. “What?” I shriek, taking the phone from my ear. Checking the clock on the phone at the same time, I turn my wrist around to see if perhaps it’s a different time. “I set an alarm,” I snarl.
“Did you do it for a.m. or p.m.?” He chuckles and I glare at the phone, but I don’t say anything when I go and check and see that I did, in fact, set it for p.m.
“You’re my husband one day and already you are getting on my nerves,” I warn him, without telling him he was right.
“Actually, it’s been two days.” I look down at the phone. “And because I’m such a good husband, I’m going to let you go get dressed and I’ll pick up coffee on my way there.”
“Now this is what I’m talking about,” I say, throwing the covers off me, “music to my ears.” I toss the phone to the side before rushing to the bathroom. I quickly wash my face and brush my teeth. I comb through my hair, deciding to leave it loose today. Reaching for my makeup bag, I quickly add a layer of mascara before going into my walk-in closet. “What does one wear to a reading of her sister’s will?” I ask the hangers, trying not to think about the fact that I’ll never be able to call her again. I will never, ever be able to ask her advice. We met each other later in life, when our teenage years were behind us, but she was still my older sister. There were times when she would give me advice. Times where she would just listen to me talk. And there were times when she was my biggest cheerleader. I ignore the tightness of my chest. I also ignore the way my chest is heaving when I pull a pair of black pants off the hanger. I put one foot in and then the other, and the tear falls on my hand. I sniff back the tears, ignoring that the tears are not coming one at a time, no, not this time. The tears are raining down my face, and every single time I blink my eyes shut, I see Lisa’s smile. She didn’t have the best life, but she made the best of what she had of it. Her biggest wish was to be a mother, and it took three IVF tries before she called me screaming at the top of her lungs, right before she sobbed, “I’m going to be a mama.” Moving toward another hanger, I slip the black short-sleeved silk top off and now the memory of painting the nursery with her snowballs its way out. Out of the box I locked away to get through the past couple of days. The box I refused to open because no one had time to break down. There were things to be done. I had to make sure I did what I needed to do to ensure I would make Lisa proud; things to do to make sure Cici ended up with me. The little girl with the same blue eyes as Lisa and me. The same blue eyes our mother had. Whatever I was going to do was going to be better than what we had. Anything was better than what we had.