Chapter Nine
Her hands were shaking when she pulled one away from her head...crimson red liquid now saturating her fingers. She didn't know what to do. She was completely frozen. She stared at the phone lying on the ground...years ago, she would have known exactly who to call...but now...now she was on her own...completely and utterly on her own. She reached for the phone...the one that was shattered in pieces on the ground...she would worry about that later...Running never felt so essential to her.
She ran even as her legs began to feel like there was a liquid poison coursing through her...even as her tears got lost in the mix of the rain and her injuries. She ran until it was no longer possible to do so. When she looked up and heard the sound of a baby crying...HER baby...her little boy.
"Stop...stop it...please just stop it," she screamed. "I know you're not here...I know I'm not going crazy."
She covered her ears with hands that were soaked in blood...the blood from her best friend Lauren. Her roommate...her partner. And she collapsed. She collapsed somewhere down the road when she could no longer drown out the sounds of Lauren's laughter or Matthew's tears.
Maybe she really was going crazy...
She shot up from the bed screaming...drenched in sweat...shaking in terror. Viki was at her side in less than a minute. "Its okay Sweetheart. You just had a bad dream. It's okay."
"It's not okay Viki," she sobbed into her shoulder. "It's not okay because it happened. Because I saw Lauren die right in front of me. I heard Matthew cry. And that wasn't even the worst of it."
They both knew the words she left unspoken...the words that would speak of a mothers grief...the grief of holding her dying daughter in her arms after she had been gunned down in her name. What could Viki do but hold her until the cries subsided and she slipped back into a restless sleep...there was no way to console someone who had lost so much...because when you lose a child, you never get over it.
Viki pulled the blanket over her and climbed into bed next to her...her arms slipping around her waist as she held her tight. "You sleep now. I'm not going to let anyone hurt you again. I promise."
They both knew it was a promise she couldn't keep but somehow it made both of them feel a little less useless when she said it. At the very least, she hoped that Nora would be able to let sleep come until morning.
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He sat in the darkness in what had once been the nursery they had planned for Matthew. He had never been able to part with the house...no matter how many times he put it on the market. He was drinking another bottle of straight up Vodka. He wanted to be numb tonight. He wanted to be drunk enough to forget the way she looked when she was coming undone. He wanted to forget the memories that still plagued him...memories from a different time...memories when she would peel off her dress and he would hold her so tight he could feel her breath against his neck...skin on skin...lips on lips...those moments when she was his to make love to...moments when they would love the night away.
He hadn't been back here since she left...Since he had thrown her out of his life and never looked back. Except now that he was here, he almost wished he hadn't come back. He was wandering from room to room...life as they left it still exactly as they left it. He could almost believe she was somewhere in this house...waiting in a tub of bubbles...standing under a hot faucet waiting for him to join her...lying in their bed with nothing on...
He picked up a photograph from the nightstand...the one they had taken when they first learned she was pregnant...he had believed they were happy then but they couldn't have been...she had been lying even then...
"I hate you," he yelled..."I hate you so much." And he hurled the picture across the room. He took another sip from the bottle of Vodka and then began to tear the house apart piece by piece. It hurt too much to love her...To hate her so much and still be so in love with her...he would destroy every trace of evidence...he would destroy the memories that still lived in this house. It was the only chance he still had to survive the tornado that had ripped through their lives... the tornado that had just walked back in...because right now, Nora Hanen was the epitome of a living, breathing, tornado...and if he didn't find some way to find shelter through the storm, she would take everything he had left.
The question that still haunted him now was whether he wanted to survive her or not...because if he let her in again, she would surely shatter more than his heart. He didn't think he could handle losing her a second time.
