Broken by Upton Stacey & Kraus Mike

Author:Upton, Stacey & Kraus, Mike
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Muonic Press Inc
Published: 2023-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Blacksburg-Pembroke Fault

Day Two

Mara had passed out quickly the night before, but she’d been roused from her sleep multiple times despite her exhaustion. Twice due to shakers that had rattled the house and another two times to check on Ethan. She’d spent time wiping his face with a cool cloth and murmuring him back to sleep as he fought the fever Anita Hillin had said to expect. Each time she’d dragged herself up the stairs back to her bedroom, she told herself she would sleep in for a bit to make up for the lost rest, but she’d woken before dawn at five, as was her habit. Mara rubbed her grainy, sore eyes and lay with her arms and legs spread wide atop the tousled bed sheets for a moment, staring at the ceiling fan and wished it was running, that it was a normal day and that her absent husband was just out of sight in the bathroom, or in the kitchen making coffee instead of lost somewhere beyond her current reach.

She churned about the chores that needed to be done before she and Caroline biked over to the hardware and grocery stores as early as possible. Perhaps the pharmacy, as well, after she checked on their remaining stock of first aid supplies. She should’ve taken care of that several weeks ago, but had pushed off the task, first busy with the end of school craziness, and then… she had no good reason that she hadn’t gotten it done. It had been pure procrastination about a low-priority item on her to-do list that she’d consistently pushed off, leaving her flat-footed in a disaster without the supplies they might need to stay healthy. Mara clenched her fists in the bedsheets as the circling negativity threatened to pin her in a chokehold comprised of her own shortcomings. No matter how tired she was, the chickens, goats, and Gretel depended on her to be fed and watered, the garden and the fish pond needed tending. She’d have to pull out some meat from the freezer to make dinner for her family, as well as determine what they could salvage from their cellar and clean up the sticky mess. None of it would get done unless she got out of bed.

“Three, two, one.” Mara chanted aloud, an old countdown trick she’d used since college to get rolling when she was stuck. Mara swung her legs to the floor on ‘one’ and moved to the bathroom to take a cold rinse, but all that emerged from the showerhead was a trickle that turned into a dribble, and then nothing.

“Fine,” she said aloud as she yanked her thick hair into a ponytail, pulled on a pair of jeans, a sports bra, and an old college t-shirt as well as thick socks and her work boots. “Fine!” she exclaimed again as her irritation with the inconvenience of no running water became underpinned by the concern that getting clean water had become an issue much more quickly than she’d expected.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.