Amid the Sinking Dark by Abe Moss

Author:Abe Moss [Moss, Abe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-05T16:00:00+00:00

18

TESSIE

Despite her confident declaration to the contrary, Tessie was indeed losing sleep. She lay in bed, in complete darkness, eyes closed, mind racing from one thing to another.

From one thing to another… then back, then back again, then back once more.

Just the two things, really.

Over and over.

First, she was irritated. Irritated with Hux for irresponsibly utilizing Nell as if she were some kind of tool he could just pull from his pocket any time he liked, no matter how dinged up she might get. Irritated with Nell for being equally thoughtless. Had she already forgotten the circumstances which put her in their care? Most likely, Tessie thought, she wanted to make herself useful. More than that, even, Tessie knew Nell was as restless tonight as she was. Going off with Hux, that was an easy escape. An easy distraction. Something to take her mind off things.

Something to give her more nightmares than she already had, more like.

Lastly, Tessie was irritated with herself for being so bothered in the first place. Irritated that she cost herself sleep over something she couldn’t control. Something that shouldn’t have worried her in the least bit. It had only been a month, maybe less. The girl was nothing to her—not a sister, not a daughter, not a niece. Hardly even a friend, as cruel as it was to think that. She was a tenant who didn’t pay rent, nothing more. If she came to Tessie the next morning and announced she wanted to return to her life in foster care, it would hardly be a difficult goodbye. No, that wasn’t cruel. That was the truth.

Then why are you so damn worried?

She’d feel stupid when they returned, she thought, with Nell safe and sound.

Not that that’s any concern of mine. Safe and sound? That’s Hux’s job right now.

She became hot under the covers as she tossed and turned like a human turbine. She checked the digital clock on her nightstand repeatedly, watching as the night grew older, waiting for the sound of their inevitable entrance through the front door downstairs. Yet the longer she waited, the less inevitable it began to feel…

And all the tea I’ve been drinking… I think I need to pee. Again.

“Tessie.”

In the dark, a voice whispered.

Tessie grew still in her restlessness. She held her breath and listened. Eyes to the ceiling, she waited. When the voice said nothing more, she sat up in bed. She looked around herself, into each gloomy corner of the room, searching for a figure. But there was no one. Nothing.

“Hello?”

In the silence created by the previous voice’s interruption, her voice came out loud and stilted from her mouth. Awkward and brute.

“Dad?”

It was his voice, she thought. There was no doubt. She’d seen him twice now already. First at the end of her bed, standing still and silent as stone. That had been what woke her first. She’d looked toward him, saw his eyes glued to her in the dark. He’d watched her until his form blended with the rest of the shadows and he vanished noiselessly.

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