Page 28 of Monster Among the Roses (Fairy Tale Quartet 1)

Holy shit, where the hell had that question vomited from? I hadn’t even really been thinking about it. It had seriously just popped out without any kind of prompting from my rational brain.

Isobel froze for a second before slowly saying, “I was seventeen.”

A knot formed in my throat. What an awful age for a girl to lose her mother. About to finish high school and move on to adulthood. Everything in her life was already changing; she probably needed her mother most then, to help guide and advise her.

“So, you’re twenty-five now?”

That question seemed to throw her. It boggled my mind too. I had no idea why I’d asked it, probably to help drag sad memories away. But she nodded.

I nodded too before mumbling, “I’m twenty-eight.”

“Oh,” she said.

She didn’t seem to know what to do with that information, and I had no idea why I’d offered it. Feeling like a moron, I rushed to add, “I was three when my dad died.”

She blinked. “Oh, I…” Her hand slowly moved to the base of her throat. “I didn’t know.”

I shrugged. “It was a car accident on his way home from work. His fault, so we had to help the insurance company pay a bunch of others who were injured that day. I guess we weren’t that bad off—financially, anyway—until then. Not that I remember. I don’t remember what our life was like before that…or anything about my dad.”

“What do you think is worse,” she murmured, watching me thoughtfully. “Having gotten to know your parent and missing her terribly after she’s gone, or never remembering him at all, and always feeling like this huge hole of nothing is stuck in the middle of you?”

I stared at her, shocked. She’d just nailed what I’d always felt. I’d never mourned for my father properly because I hadn’t remembered him the way my older siblings had. They’d always told me how lucky I’d been, that I didn’t have to hurt as much as they did, but I’d still felt something. An ache I couldn’t describe.

But the way she just said huge hole of nothing had labeled it perfectly. I had suffered, just as my siblings had, except in a different way.

“I don’t know,” I murmured. “They both kind of suck.”

“Yeah,” she agreed slowly. “They do.”

Silence fell between us, but a good silence, a bonding kind of silence where for once we seemed to understand another soul and that other soul understood us in return.

“I usually start running at five every morning,” Isobel said.

I jerked my attention to her. My heart began to hammer. “Five?”

She gave a single, abrupt nod, refusing to look my way.

Hope—hope like I’d never felt before—exploded inside me. “I’ll be here.”

chapter

NINE

It was early. It was way too fucking early for me.

I’d left the house at three thirty to get here by five, and I felt dead on my feet. After spending most of the weekend taking care of my mom, who’d caught the flu, reading up on carpentry, and finishing Brisingr, I’d already gotten to bed late on both Saturday and Sunday nights, but waking up at three in the fucking morning was what was going to lay me flat.

When I reached the gate at the end of the drive, I almost wept, ready to curl up on the ground and sleep for a couple decades. Except I’d told Isobel I’d run with her this morning.

Run.

Right.

I could barely make my feet keep walking.

Since about my third trip to Porter Hall, I’d stopped ringing the intercom at the gate to ask for permission to enter. There wasn’t a fence around the property; it seemed bothersome and time-consuming to call someone to open the gate when I could just walk around it. And since I was beginning to feel as if I was actually welcome here, I walked around it now and trudged up the long lane.

I wore sweats and running shoes instead of my usual blue jeans and work boots, but I’d tucked my work clothes away in the book bag I carried as well as a change of T-shirts.

---