by L. L. Akers
Graysie’s red hair and green eyes floating past them every day were a constant reminder for Olivia and Grayson—and his team—to keep trying…keep searching. Neither of them could or would forget Ember. They’d find her. Grayson and Dusty had promised.
Olivia pushed Ember out of her mind for now and ignored Graysie’s snark. She gave her a small smile, although Graysie didn’t see it. “Can I make you some hot cocoa or something?”
“Nope.”
Olivia sighed. She still needed to find a way to make friends with Graysie. Anything less would be miserable for all of them. She wasn't giving up.
She kept her back to Graysie as she poured milk into a small saucepan and got out the cocoa. She took down two mugs—just in case—and turned the stove on low. Maybe she could entice Graysie to share a cup with her anyway.
She finished the cocoa, pouring it into the two mugs, and carried them to the table.
Graysie ignored her.
She slid into the seat next to Graysie, sliding a mug toward her while the girl silently stared down at the table to the puzzle that had been there since the first time Olivia had seen the house.
It was a stunning picture. A wind-blown flower field of Black-eyed Susan’s, bending in the breeze, blanketed by a beautiful blue sky, dotted with fluffy white clouds and filled with rays of sunlight beaming down on the field of flowers.
The jigsaw puzzle was huge. It covered a third of the dining room table. It must’ve taken hours and hours to put it together. Weeks, even.
“So you like puzzles, huh?” Olivia asked nonchalantly, hoping to break through just a little to Graysie while Grayson slept.
“Nope. Mom did,” Graysie snapped loudly. Then she guiltily looked up at Olivia and gave her a short apology.
Well, that’s progress, Olivia thought. She wasn’t expecting even a one-word apology. “It’s okay. I was just wondering. I noticed it's been sitting here since the first time I came over.”
Graysie sighed and looked back down at the puzzle. She ran her hands over her face, across the top of her head and down her long, red curls. Such a serious gesture for such a young girl. It hurt Olivia’s heart to see her in turmoil over a simple puzzle.
“That's because this was the last puzzle she was working on before we left for our trip—my dad’s business trip—where…”
She paused and cleared her throat quietly.
“It's exactly as she left it ten years ago. I slid it onto a flat box and wrapped it in thick paper to try to get it here in one piece when we moved,” Graysie finished.
Olivia noticed the puzzle wasn't quite complete. There was one empty hole, where the wood from the old farm table peeked through—just a small rip in the beautiful scene, above the flowers and below the blue sky.
“Did you lose some pieces?” Olivia asked, and ran her fingers around the edges of the hole.
Graysie reached into her lap and pulled out a small velvet bag. It looked tattered, as though she’d handled it too much.
“No. They're in here.” She dropped the bag onto the table. “Mom had plenty of time to finish it, but she kept insisting it wasn't ready. She wouldn't even let me see the pieces.”
“Well, it’s been a really long time now. Don't you think she’d want you to finish what she started? It's a beautiful picture.”
Graysie’s eyes filled with tears.
“I'd love to finish it. Or at least see the missing pieces. But mom always said it wasn't ours to finish. Dad used to tease her about it. But she never changed her mind. It sat unfinished on this same table for weeks before she died. We've never even taken the extra pieces out of the bag.”
Olivia tilted her head and squeezed her eyebrows together. “Did she ever say who was supposed to finish it?”
“No. Only that it wasn't ours to finish—hers, mine or Dad's. Sometimes she just said weird things like that. I had no idea what she was talking about, and at the time, I really didn’t care. I didn’t care about her puzzles then. It’s a waste of time to put something together, only to tear it apart again.’
She shuddered, trying to stop a sob from breaking through.
“Now that she’s… gone… it seemed really important to her. She used to sit in this exact chair at this table and stare at it for hours, never saying a word. So I just can't put it away unfinished. It's like it's waiting for...I don't know what...its happily ever after—or something,” Graysie said and then rolled her eyes, as though she meant it as sarcasm.
But Olivia could see she meant what she said. This mystery of this puzzle seemed to be the last link to her mom. It was important to her to follow her wishes, and to figure out why. It must’ve been hard to sit and stare at it for days, weeks… years…since she was a little girl. Especially when she didn’t understand what her mother meant for them to do with it.
Graysie continued, “I know it kills Daddy every time he sees it. He probably still sees Mom here, crouched over it for hours, putting the pieces together. He keeps asking me what I'm waiting for. But honestly, I don't know. I just want to figure out what she was waiting for.”
Graysie's eyes were almost overflowing with the unspent tears. Olivia wondered how many late nights she had sat here, caressing the velvet bag in her hand, wanting so badly to open it and spill the pieces, finishing her mom's puzzle and put it away, if only so she and her father didn't have to stare at it during every meal. They must have agonized over it, re-living the pain of her death every day.
Closure. Maybe this is what would help Graysie with at least a little closure.
Olivia placed her hand over Graysie's. “Maybe finishing it will help both you and your dad?”
“I can't!” Graysie yelled. “Don’t you see? I promised her I wouldn't. So did Daddy. It seemed silly at the time, but it was our last promise to her.” Graysie swallowed down a sob. “And I almost never kept my promises to her before—when she was alive.” Her voice broke on her last word. She took a deep breath and said, “I can’t break this last promise.”
Olivia waited a moment to allow Graysie to regain her composure.
“But Graysie, I didn't promise your mother. Let me put the final pieces in. Finishing it doesn't mean you'd have to put it totally away. Maybe we could glue it to a backboard and frame it. We could hang it in your room. Wouldn’t you like to see it there?”
Graysie looked up with hope etched on her face.
“So, you’re sayin’ if you finish it, I’ll have kept my promise to Mom. Right?”
Olivia nodded. “Yes, you will have kept your promise. And I’d bet she’d love to have you hang her last puzzle in your room where you could see this amazing scene every day.”
Graysie nodded her head, her eyes too full to speak. Olivia could see she was ready. Ready to put the pieces to the unfinished puzzle together, and start healing.
Olivia slowly picked up the pouch, giving her time to change her mind. Graysie’s eyes never left the bag. Olivia dumped the pieces out onto the table, and turned them over, one by one. Seven pieces. She looked back at the big picture, covered in the field of flowers under the summer sky...blues and greens, black and orange, some white… These pieces didn't seem to belong at all. They were mostly red—with just a teensy bit of orange, black or blue around the edges. Maybe these weren’t the missing pieces after all?
She picked up the first one, turning it this way and that...comparing the jagged edges to the pieces surrounding the hole. Surprisingly, she found a place it fit.
She picked up another and found a place for it too, although it still looked out of place and had no discernible shape... Five more pieces and then the picture was shockingly complete.
Olivia gasped, staring at the finished puzzle.
Graysie stared at the puzzle too, her brow furrowed. She looked up at Olivia with wet eyes. Her chin trembled. Her face a mask of confusion.
Olivia met her gaze with a slow shrug of her shoulders, and a small shake of her head…her own eyes glistening too. “I swear, Graysie. I didn’t know.”
“Would you...umm…turn around?” Graysie asked in a meek voice.
Olivia hesitated, but then slowly turned in her seat. She pulled her hair off to one side over her left shoulder. Her long nightgown, held up only by thin straps, bared the back of her right shoulder.
She felt naked under Graysie’s stare. She paused for just a moment and then slid back around in her seat, letting her dark waves fall back down to cover her shoulders.
Graysie had stood up while Olivia's back was turned. And now her hand was held over her mouth in astonishment. Her eyes were huge. She lowered her hand and pointed at Olivia.
“It’s almost identical. How can that be?” Graysie wailed.
“I don’t know, honey. It’s just a coincidence, I guess.”
Graysie shook her head. “No. It was you! Mama made us wait for you!”
The missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle had formed a scarlet-red dragonfly, proudly poised on the top of the button-like black carpet crowning the beautiful orange petals of the flower. It wings were still, as though it had found a place to rest.
Without the dragonfly, it had seemed the focus of the picture had been the beautiful flower field and the amazing sky. But with the missing pieces in place, it was clear the dragonfly was what held the scene together.
Graysie was shaking. Standing there in front of Olivia, in her long sleeping T-shirt that hung to her knees, like a little girl lost…shaking and crying.
Olivia scooted her chair back and opened her arms wide, hoping this time, she would finally accept her embrace.
Graysie rushed into her, nearly knocking her out of the chair, and landed heavily on her lap. She buried her face, like a child, into Olivia's shoulder and wrapped her arms around her, squeezing with all her might.
“She knew, Olivia. She somehow knew it would be you. You're the missing piece...” she choked out around her tears. “Mama wanted you here. You complete us.”
Olivia held the adult-sized girl in her lap and cradled her. She rocked her like a baby as the girl finally let her grief out in loud, wracking sobs.
She stroked her fiery red curls and cooed to her, as though she were her own child, and then she whispered in her ear.
“No, Graysie. It’s you and your father that complete me, sweetie.”
The End.
Also by Lisa akers
A Holiday Novella and a New Series
Book Four: The Girl in Red is a holiday novella available now. If fits behind Book 3-The Girl in the Sea and stars the girls’ dad and a mysterious girl in red.
Also, a new series starts after Book 3, The Girl in the Sea. It will again follow Gabby, Emma, and Olivia. If you’d like to read what happens after their happily ever after’s, then sign up to be notified of the release date on the below ‘alert’ link.
IMPORTANT: Click to get an email ALERT and pick up each book for the .99 launch price before the public price kicks in.
The Girl in Red
On a snowy night, and very nearly the eve of Christmas, Pop—a grumpy old soul full of regret and guilt—comes face to face with a dark, pain-filled past, and must make a decision that will affect the future of himself, as well as his three beautiful daughters: Gabby, Olivia and Emma.
As the icy sky falls around him, plump with cold and shining brightly with a hint of Christmas magic, he’ll have one chance at redemption. A chance not many parents are afforded. And in the end, he may learn a hard lesson:
Be careful what you wish for.
Get The Girl in Red here.
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Thank you and please help!
Thank you for reading The Girl in the Sea, book 3 of The Let Me Go Trilogy. If you enjoyed this novel, it would help me out so much if you could leave a review for this book on Amazon here (it can be anonymous). Authors rely on reviews to interest other readers. I’d really appreciate your help in getting this trilogy discovered.
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About the Author
L.L. Akers is originally from the Midwest where she grew up climbing trees, haystacks, and haylofts—escaping into other worlds with a good book. She enjoyed playing cow-pattie hopscotch and outrun-the-bull with her siblings. She now lives in the South, the silly wife of a serious man, and mother of two very gifted and fetching male humans. She also has her own posse of creatures: a chubby beagle that looks astonishingly like a mini-cow, a deranged terrier, as well as a paddling of Muscovy ducks, a chattering of chickens, a herd of tiny but boastful lizards, and a colony of obnoxiously loud serenading frogs.
After a career in human resources, she now pursues life as a writer. She loves dragonflies, staring at word art, and slinging ink. She also enjoys 4-wheelin', marksmanship shooting, canning fruits and veggies, and studying potential survival situations. Eyes wide open...
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Afterword
If you’ve read my work, you know it’s my passion to bring real-life awareness of abuse and survival to readers—through my stories. In the first three books (the Trilogy), I focused on abuse and then living as a survivor with PTSD, and finally finding the happily ever after.
In this book, I wanted to give Olivia her own happily after, as well as broach the subject of human sex-trafficking that will be the focus of the next full novel in the series. The research I’ve done is heart-breaking; the true stories I read were appalling. The videos I watched were shocking. So I foreshadowed a warning that the upcoming book will be about Ember taken into a human-trafficking ring.
While it will be fiction—it could be brutal to read. Sex-trafficking is really happening all around us, in the United States and globally. Every. Single. Day.
I hope you will read it, but even if you don’t, know that this affects you and yours too. Please…
Watch. Listen. Be Aware. Be Free.
The Girl in the Sea: Find Me, Keep Me, Copyright © 2016 by Lisa Akers, a.k.a. L.L. Akers, All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America, First Printing 2016.
Please do not share this e-book. It is against the law. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission, or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, dead or living, business establishments, events or locales is coincidental.
Cover Design 2016 by: https://perfectcoverstory.com/
