Page 10 of Master of My Heart

Chapter Five

At dinner that night, Sabrina sat next to an older woman traveling alone. When it was time for meals, passengers were assigned a time, then seated with random strangers in the train’s central dining car. They did have the option of eating in their room, but Sabrina was trying to be brave. She ate in her room at lunch, but for dinner, she decided to eat with everybody else. It was so different from what she’d become accustomed to. A good kind of different.

Charlene, Sabrina’s dinner companion, was a sixty-something, vibrant grandmother of nine who was traveling to see her second grandson at college in Kansas. She told stories of her daughter that made Sabrina’s heart ache for her own mother—the mother who raised her. And her biological mother and grandmother.

All of them died horrific deaths.

During a lull in their conversation, she stared out the window and blinked hard.

Charlene put her hand on the younger woman’s. “Are you all right, dear?”

Sabrina nodded and blinked, trying to make the tears go away before turning back to her.

“Do you see your mother often?” the older woman asked.

“She—” Sabrina’s voice caught in her throat. She swallowed and stared for a moment, then shook her head. “She died.” The dying screams of the woman who raised her echoed through her mind. She blinked rapidly to make the tears go away. It didn’t work.

Charlene’s face immediately softened into sympathy. “Oh my. I’m so sorry.” She tilted her head. “Was it recent?”

The question made Sabrina stop and think for a moment. How long ago was that? She thought back to the calendar in Mr. Baker’s office. It had been five years since her parents’ murder. Five years! That meant she was twenty years—

No, it was almost the middle of September. She was twenty-one!

Where had her life gone?

Sabrina stared at her plate of spaghetti and felt her stomach clench. She tried to swallow past the lump in her throat.

Chase...

She exhaled, feeling as if she’d been punched in the chest. There was no way he would have waited for her. The last few days, she’d been dreaming of what it would be like to arrive in Boston and see him again, but it had been five years!

What a foolish girl she was. No man in his right mind would wait that long without communication from a girl. Sabrina buried her face in her hands and pressed her fingers against her eyeballs until she saw gold sparkles.

She was no longer the sweet, innocent girl he met on the yacht that night. That was stolen away within a few days of meeting him.

Her heart no longer ached with longing, but with sorrow. Grief burned in her chest and she wanted to scream. She scooted quickly across the bench seat to the aisle, knocking her plate to the floor. Charlene called after her, but she ignored her as she hurried through the car and into the next one, searching for the bathroom. She needed to be alone.

She locked the door and turned to stare at herself in the mirror, leaning her hands on the cold steel sink. How long had it been since she really looked at herself? Her long, dark hair hung around her thin face and prominent cheekbones, falling down her chest. Her figure was more womanly than she remembered. Her eyes were still the same pale green, but there was something different in them than before. Sadness.

Who was this stranger staring back at her?

Her childhood, so close to being complete when she arrived home from Boston, had been snatched away in the blink of an eye. In an instant, she was turned from an innocent girl into a monster and whore.

She let out a cry and collapsed onto the floor. Sobs wracked her body as she bit her fist, hoping the pain would negate the growing anguish in her heart.

She had no one to go to in Boston.

Chase had surely moved on. Maybe he was even married with kids by now.

Oh God! The thought of him happily married to another woman made her want to pull her hair out. She grasped a handful and let out a hoarse cry.

I have nothing.

I’ve lost everything.

*****

Later that night, Sabrina stared blankly out the window, her mind wandering aimlessly through her memories.

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