Take and Give by Amanda G. Stevens

Author:Amanda G. Stevens
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christian Fiction;Church Persecution;Dystopian Fiction;Futuristic Fiction;Speculative Fiction;Visionary Fiction
Publisher: David C. Cook
Published: 2015-07-22T16:29:13+00:00

27

A pushpin of light jabbed her eyes. Lee turned her face into the pillow. She must have fallen asleep, after all. But what was this piercing shaft? Not morning. She’d pulled the thick drapes before they went to bed, leaving a strip of the streetlight outside so she wouldn’t awake in the dark. Lee rolled onto her back and cracked her eyelids. The lamp had been turned on its lowest setting.

“Violet?” She swallowed the wasteland from her voice. “What’s—?”

Marcus.

Lee sat up, but Violet wasn’t standing over her. Nor was anyone else. “Violet.”

“Sorry.” The word quivered up from the floor.

Lee looked over the side of her bed. Violet sat cross-legged beside the floor safe. The empty floor safe. Marcus’s Bible lay open across her knees.

“What are you doing?”

Violet glanced up, then ducked her head, but not in time. She’d been crying for a while, eyes bloodshot and tears blotting her sleeve where she’d wiped her face on her shoulder.

“Violet.” Lee pushed aside the covers.

“I’ll turn the light off.”

“Why are you—?”

“Don’t.” The word ruptured on a sob.

Had the Bible caused this devastation? No, she must have gone there for comfort. And of course, she didn’t want to discuss it—the cold barrel pressing under her chin, the warm body pressing her too close. Lee shuddered.

“I thought if I let myself sleep, I’d get stuck in a dream. You know how that happens sometimes? You know you’re dreaming but you can’t wake up?”

No. Lee’s nightmares were reality as long as they held her. She drew her knees up and planted her heels on the mattress.

“I started reading in Matthew, but I was getting sleepy, and I thought maybe it would keep me awake to read Romans, because I can’t understand all of Romans, and … and …” Violet hid her face in her arms.

Should Lee talk to her? How? Words couldn’t erase this.

The tears broke off, stifled by a long breath. Violet’s hands, palms scabbing now, wiped her face. She closed the Bible and placed it back into the safe and locked it.

“My eyes are adjusted to the light,” Lee said. “I’ll be able to sleep if you—”

“No.” Violet pushed to her feet and crawled into bed. “I can’t read anymore.”

She shut off the light, and Lee kept her eyes on the crack between the drapes. “If I can help in any way, please say so.”

Only quiet answered her. A few minutes later, someone stomped past their room, and clanking began from the ice machine. Hazard of sleeping toward the end of the hall. When the noise stopped and the person had tramped back the way he’d come, Violet rolled over with a rustle of sheets.

“What would it take?” New tears trembled in the whisper.

What would it take … to sleep without nightmares? Surely that was the cause of her distress. If I knew that, I’d mend myself as well.

No, she wouldn’t. Her own flashbacks had been earned with her choice.

“I don’t know, Violet. Perhaps you only need time to process what happened.”

“No, Lee. What would it take … for you to believe?”

Frost slithered around her.

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