Page 99 of Fated

I want to help Junie find a cot for her baby.

I have to go back and tell Aaron that I do. I do feel the same.

You can’t close a chapter before it’s over. You can’t stop a dream before it’s finished.

We’re not done yet.

“Don’t you like it?” Mila asks, worry pinching her voice.

I turn to her, my vision hazy. “No, I love it. It’s a beautiful painting. A beautiful poem.”

She nods then and snuggles down into her pillow, her eyelids dragging low.

I stride back to her, kneel at her bedside, and drop a kiss to her cool forehead. “Sleep tight.”

She yawns. “M’kay.”

At that I switch off her bedside lamp and close her door with a quiet snick.

Then, in my bedroom, I climb into bed with a book of poetry and a pocket watch. I memorize another poem and then I fall into sleep, hoping I’m in time to say?—

Yes. I feel the same.

34

The noise is deafening.I bolt upright in bed, clammy sweat dripping between my breasts, my heart thundering.

The black is absolute. Not even the silver-gray of moonlight breaches the darkness. I feel around the bed, kicking the sweat-soaked sheets aside, and reach for the lamp. I turn the switch. Nothing. The room remains dark.

The air is humid, sticky-damp, and stagnant. I wipe my hand across the perspiration on my forehead and breathe in the stuffiness of a house hunched down and locked tight.

“Aaron?”

My voice is drowned out by the roar of outside. It sounds as if I’m standing in a tunnel and I’m seconds from being mowed down by a charging train. Rain thunders against the tiles of the roof and the wind slams against the cottage walls, howling and raging.

So this is the storm.

I resist the urge to cover my ears. Instead I inch to the edge of the bed and toe my foot toward the floor. I’m surprised to find cool stone tile. The cottage has wood floors, smooth and glossy.

I’m not in the cottage then. And Aaron isn’t here.

I stand and inch my way across the floor, my hands stretched out in front of me, until I hit a wall. I slide along the cool plaster until my fingers catch on a ridge of wooden molding.

My breath is loud and nervous. I grasp the metal doorknob and swing open the door.

The soft glow of yellow light spills across me and I breathe out a sigh of relief. I let my eyes adjust. The light is weak. It’s filtered down a long hallway.

I was right. I’ve never been in this house before. The walls are coral, the trim is white. The tile floors are beige and cracks run through them. The walls are crooked and the ceiling is low. There are two closed doors across from me, and at the end of the hallway there’s a kitchen with coral cabinets and a round table. A hurricane lamp glows on the kitchen table.

I don’t see anyone.

But just when I believe I’m alone in this house, I hear him.

It’s a sharp, unhappy cry. The type of whimper that makes every parent bolt upright from a dead sleep and rush into their baby’s bedroom.

I hurry down the hallway toward the sound of Sean’s cries.

When I step into the kitchen the lamplight spills over me. I turn toward the sound of his ragged cry and stop at the threshold.

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