A Shimmer of Angels by Lisa M. Basso

Author:Lisa M. Basso [Basso, Lisa M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA)

Chapter Twenty-Five

His words struck me like lightning. I drew back, my breath faltering. Waves of shock rolled up my stomach. This is all to get a rise out of you. Don’t believe one word.

“You mean …” I couldn’t finish. My memories—of my mother … I couldn’t let him tarnish them. They were all I had left. The nights she read to us, the dinners we helped with, Sunday mornings when she’d make fruit pancakes from whatever she had in the greenhouse and would shape them like our favorite cartoon characters. None of those moments could change. I refused to believe my mother would read us stories and then sneak off into the night with him. That while we cleaned up dinner, she was looking out the window wondering what if. Or that, on her way to gather fruit from the greenhouse, she stopped for a quick affair. …

Something inside me withered.

No. Kade had said he’d known Mom by her maiden name. She never would have cheated on Dad. Never.

I buried my fingertips into the napkin in my right hand. The pain eased the panic enough to allow for a clear moment to think. As intact as I wanted to keep her memory, I realized I knew very little about who my mother really was. Dad refused to talk about her; he put his feelings in the grave the day we lowered her in.

I swallowed the instinct to plead for him to tell me everything about her and asked something marginally less intimate. “Could my mother see you—as you are?”

“No.” His answer was short, clipped. “As far as I know, you’re the first cursed with that particular gift.”

Nope, didn’t like that answer. “You called me Kay. Why? She’s dead.” I channeled my anger, flinging it at him in the hopes the dagger in my heart would somehow find purchase in his chest as well.

He lowered his gaze to his empty cup. “When you found me feeding, and I saw you standing under that yellow light above the back door—” he looked up, and the darkness in his eyes melted me, though I wished it hadn’t. “—you looked like her. Exactly like her.”

Lies, lies! I looked nothing like Mom.

He was like all the others, avoiding her death, skipping over it like it was a chapter he didn’t agree with in a book. I would get more from him later. No matter what it took.

He thought I looked like her. No telling what he’d do if he saw Laylah. The thought left me cold.

Another person I’d have to protect. He’d never get anywhere near my sister.

“You have her eyes.”

Slivers of ice cut into my bones, rendering them useless. If it weren’t for my hold beneath the counter, I might have puddled onto the lemon-scented floor. My mother’s eyes. If only he was right, if only I could look into the mirror and see even the smallest piece of her. But I couldn’t.

“Ray-na.” The terrifying sing-song way he said my name helped pull me back together.

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