In my room, I laid Grace down on the overstuffed bed. Amazingly, she had fallen asleep before we even got there. Exhausted from missing her parents and crying, I watched her tiny chest rise and fall into a deep, heavy rhythm and hoped that sleep would do something to erase the deep purple circles beneath her eyes. I was just getting ready to go lie down myself when the door behind me eased open a few inches.
“Charlotte?”
My dad’s voice made my heart leap. I turned around fast, hoping to catch him at the door before he made it inside and saw Grace. Her small, soft features so blatantly identified her as my sister, I wanted some time to ease the information onto him.
I was too late.
At the door, his eyes were riveted to the bed where she slept. The blood had run from his face completely and I actually worried he might collapse from the shock.
“Dad?”
My voice startled him from his trance and he turned his head to meet my eyes. “Charlotte?” he asked completely confused.
I sighed and my shoulders sagged from the strain of everything.
He returned his gaze to the sleeping Grace, “It’s like looking back in time…like looking at you.” His voice was filled with amazement. He moved into the room and approached the side of the bed so quietly, he hardly made a sound at all. “Who is she?” he whispered.
I hesitated for only a moment, wondered if there were any way to spare him further pain, but in the end realized there was no point. The truth would do two things regardless of whether he heard it now or later—it would come out, and it would hurt.
I was just about to tell him when he surprised me. “Is she your sister?” he asked.
At first I couldn’t find my voice, I nodded. “Yes,” I finally whispered not wanting to wake her up.
He nodded his head and then switched to shaking it. I was expecting him to completely fall apart at this realization but instead, he smiled. “I used to love watching you sleep when you were this age. Your mother hated it because she was always worried I would wake you up, but I would sneak into your room and watch you breathe.” He looked into my eyes and then back at Grace. “Just like this.”
“Dad?”
“Hmm?” he asked but didn’t look away from Grace.
“Aren’t you upset?”
He seemed to consider my question for a moment, and then he gave a half shrug. “I’m in shock. After everything…honestly I don’t think I can be any more upset than I already was. I’m already at the bottom. Besides, it’s not like it’s her fault,” he held his hand up to Grace. “She’s just a baby.”
I didn’t think Grace was exactly a ‘baby’ anymore but it didn’t seem the time to point this out to him.
Suddenly, as if something very important just occurred to him, he swung his attention back to me. “Who’s going to take care of her?”
“I don’t know exactly. But I’m pretty sure I’m all she has.”
He let this soak in then started nodding his head decidedly. “We,” he corrected and turned back to watch Grace as she shifted in her sleep. “We are all she has.”
Later, with Caleb and Sophie gone, and my father busy falling head over heels in love with Grace, I knocked on my uncle’s office door.
“Come in,” he said.
When I pushed the door, I quickly scanned the darkened room until I found him standing in front of the picture window, staring out at the fields rolling away from the house. “Nigel?”
He turned to face me, but didn’t say a word.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
He raised his eyebrows and took a deep breath. “About history I suppose. About victories…defeats. I’m thinking about power, the application of power…the consequences of getting in the way of power.”
He looked up into my eyes. “I’m trying to not think about what might be happening to my sister right at this moment.”
I swallowed hard and nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”
He watched me, waited for me to go on.
“Tomorrow I’m leaving. I’m going to get her back.”
He shook his head, “It’s over Charlotte. Emerick has the box and first three keys. He has Elizabeth. He has everything he needs. Soon enough he will have the remaining three keys and will be able to use the puzzle for whatever purpose he thinks it will serve him.”
Now it was my turn to shake my head. “No, no he won’t.”
He had a look of disbelief, “Why?”
“Because Emerick still needs me, he still needs what’s inside my head.”
“Which is?”
In the cave, Emerick’s men had beaten the Buddhist key keeper until he gave them the answer they thought they needed. But the man had lied to them and only told the truth to me once we were safely inside the astral plane. “The real location of the fourth key.”
There was no way Emerick was going to be able to solve the rest of the puzzle without me, and I was going to use that fact to get my mother back.
The End
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Rebecca Taylor is the author of:
Ascendant--winner of the Colorado Book Award
Midheaven
The Exquisite & Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza.
She lives in Colorado with her husband and two children. In addition to writing, she works as a school psychologist and teaches creative writing at Regis University.
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Charlotte’s story continues in
Descendant
Book Three in the Ascendant Trilogy
Available May 2017
The Exquisite & Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza
Carmen Espinoza is finally leaving her mother today, but before she goes, she needs one more thing—the “before” photo. The photo is the only evidence that her family was once normal, happy, and together. Before her brother died. Beginning her senior year as a foreign exchange student in Oaxaca, Mexico, Carmen believes her normal life is about to begin, but when she sees her dead brother during the Day of the Dead festivities, she soon discovers that leaving your past behind is not as simple as packing a bag.
Buy it here on Amazon: The Exquisite & Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza
Midheaven (Ascendant Trilogy Book 2) Page 28
