Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 111860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 559(@200wpm)___ 447(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
He grinned, completely unfazed by the sounds coming from beyond the door, the sound of something heavy being pushed against it and what she now knew was a broom handle being jammed under the lever. Why make things bloodier when two people had sealed their own doom by locking themselves in a commercial freezer? Or maybe they were sociopaths. Maybe knowing their victims would both suffer, and for longer, excited them. “Are you sure?” Tanner asked with a lift of his brow. “I’m almost positive he’s a musician.”
“He’s an artist.” She could visualize his paintings even now. Abstract. Disturbing as far as she was concerned and not at all her style.
“No, I’m pretty sure he plays the piano.”
She rolled her eyes. He loved to pretend to be wrong about something and get her nineteen-year-old self riled up. The Lennon of now pulled in a breath of despair. “Your sense of humor would have gotten better,” she said. “I was counting on it.”
He laughed. “No, it wouldn’t have. And no, you weren’t. But by the way, I still have a sense of humor.”
“You’re dead, Tan.”
“Whatever you say, Picasso.” He smiled again. “But there’s a lot you don’t know.”
“Like what?” She turned toward the sound of another object being shoved in front of the door. She’d known later what they used but she couldn’t remember now. It didn’t matter, she supposed. She’d finally found the courage to get up, then, and she watched as her panicked, horrified, tearful self moved Tanner gently and then stood, pushing uselessly against the door. She went over to her then-self and took her hand. The girl looked up, startled, eyes blinking as Lennon pulled the girl that was her away from the door. They sat on the floor again, and Lennon put her arm around the girl and pulled her close, the Saint Bernard taking the other side and warming her chilled skin. It’d been so cold. So hopeless and so desolate. So filled with indescribable grief. She could never stand the cold after that. It was the temperature of horror and despair. The mildest chill would send panic dripping through her. She carried blankets and sweaters everywhere she went, refusing to ever be cold again. Trying desperately to ward off the wintry winds of mourning.
The misty numbers split and divided and twirled toward her through the air, disappearing through her skin, marking her, even if she didn’t know exactly how.
A second scene rose up in front of her, that moment she’d driven by Ambrose standing in the rain. He’d looked to be shivering, and she couldn’t bear it. She couldn’t drive by and leave him there in the cold. Not after the story he’d told about the sea lion and the man who’d realized the value of his life in a four-second fall.
In some ways, her freezer had been her four-second fall. But she’d carried such guilt for wanting so badly to live, to come out alive, when Tanner would not. Lines of light and opaque numbers split and jumped and rose and fell, and for the flash of an instant she understood it all. How the universe was made of math and vibrations and everything affected everything each moment of every day. And as soon as that vast knowledge blossomed, it faded away, ungraspable. Gone.
She drew the girl that was her closer, letting her know she was going to be okay. She was going to live, and she was going to heal, and she was going to be pulled from this freezer, almost dead but not quite, her will to live strong and fierce. For herself and for Tanner, who she’d held in her arms that long frigid night, stroking his frozen cheek even after he’d died.
She’d asked him a question a moment ago—what is it I don’t know? She looked up at him now, and he was watching her, a small smile on his face. “Well, you might not know that classical music very literally lowers blood pressure and reduces anxiety. You should remember that, Picasso. And you should start playing again.”
She shook her head. “I can’t, Tan. It hurts too much. That was the old me and I can’t be her again.”
“You can’t be me, either, though. So where does that leave you?”
She sighed. He was right, and she had no answer to his question. When she looked back up at Tanner, he still had that gentle smile on his face, and this time, he had a bundle in his arms. He nodded down to what she could now see was a baby. He approached and squatted next to her, holding the baby so carefully. Her heart squeezed tightly in pain. “Is it our baby?” she asked. The one they would have had but now never would?
“No, silly,” he said. “It’s your baby. He’s beautiful. He’s going to be a healer.” Then Tanner tipped the baby, and Lennon gasped as the baby rolled forward and then disappeared into her. Tanner smiled. He stood and went to the door. “Open it, Lennon.”