Echo(4)

And I cry.

Eyes burning.

Lungs aching.

Hope disintegrating.

I’m all powdered ash, so hold your breath before a drift of air picks me up and carries me away to nullity.



“NINA.”

Tension aches in my muscles as I stir awake. When I roll over and open my tear-stung eyes, I notice Clara, the housekeeper and cook moving around the room.

“It’s nearly noon. You’ve been sleeping all morning.” She speaks in a gentle voice before pulling the drapes back.

Light flashes, burning my eyes, and I jerk my head away, squinting against the sun’s rays that pierce the room.

Clara walks around the bed and takes a seat next to me, stroking her fingers through my tangled hair, and the touch awakens the swollen wound in my heart that only sleep can soothe. Tears leak out onto my pillow, and I close my tired eyes.

“You should eat, dear. It might help you feel better.”

I shake my head. Food can’t heal this. I’m not sure anything can. I’ve lost everything. My baby, Declan, Pike ... everything that mattered to me. And for what? Everyone is dead and there’s nothing gained. Nothing but misery. The constricting around my heart makes each breath unbearable, and I desperately want to drift away. More than drift, I just want Declan to hold me. To anchor me by wrapping his warm arms around me, cocooning me into his chest, and filling my lungs with his scent—his life.

The one man who showed me what it was to be loved ... truly loved ... in the purest form is gone. Gone at the hands of my brother ... my other love, my protector.

“Maybe a shower?” Clara suggests, but I don’t respond. I just keep my eyes closed.

It isn’t but a moment until I hear her sniff. When I peek my eyes open, I watch as she brushes the tears away from her cheeks. I shift my body against the tender bruising that remains from Pike’s brutal beating a few days ago, the beating that killed my baby and led to the deaths of my husband, my lover, my brother, and my own soul. Clara looks over to me when I sit up and wince.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cry.”

I don’t say anything as I watch her try to recompose her poise through the sorrow she feels. I feel it too but for entirely different reasons. So I pull on my mask and continue my role, saying, “It feels so lonely without him. I keep thinking he’s just away on another trip and he’ll be walking through the door any minute.”

She nods while her tears continue to fall and then looks to me. “I’m worried about you.”

I am too.

“I’ll be okay.”

“Bennett wouldn’t want you to be suffering like this.”

What she doesn’t know, what nobody knows, is that I’m not suffering for Bennett. I’m not the harrowed widow mourning over her husband. No. I’m mourning over the man I was cheating on my husband with and my brother that no one knew anything about. My hidden life. My clandestine existence.

“How could I possibly not suffer, Clara? He was my husband,” I choke out. “How am I supposed to live without him when he was my reason for waking up every day?”

“Because the world doesn’t wait on us. It keeps moving and expects us to move right along with it.”

“I’m not sure how to move right now.”

“Well,” Clara begins, resting her hand on my knee. “You can start by taking a shower and trying to eat something.” Her eyes are sad and filled with concern. When I nod my head, a small smile breaks upon her lips, and she gives my knee a gentle squeeze before getting up to leave the room. Turning back to me, she adds, “Oh, while you were sleeping, your attorney called. He’d like to schedule a time to meet with you to go over Bennett’s will.”

This was the moment I had been working years for. The moment Pike and I dreamed about. This was supposed to be the moment that brought me victory and happiness. The money. The power. Payback and retribution. And now it means nothing without Pike by my side. I married Bennett to destroy him, but it didn’t make anything better—it’s just worse.

“I’ll give him a call after lunch,” I respond before Clara walks out and closes the door behind her.

Getting ready is a blur. I make the movements but then can’t remember how I got from point A to point B. Clara is in the kitchen, cleaning up after lunch while I sift through the sheaf of messages from all the calls I’ve missed since Bennett’s death. I’m sure it’s all over the news, but I can’t bring myself to turn on the TV for fear I’ll hear something about Declan. I’d crumble for sure.