January Fifteenth by Rachel Swirsky

Author:Rachel Swirsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

UBI Day: Afternoon

Hannah

The wind and snow screamed at each other, too equally matched for either to win.

All Hannah could think of was how long it would take Abigail to park and get to the house. Luckily, it was harder than it looked to get from the driveway to the front door if you didn’t know the shortcut. The ice would help too.

Elizabeth noticed Hannah’s face. “What’s wrong?”

The question broke Hannah out of stasis. “Sorry. You can’t stay. You should go now. Use the back door from the kitchen.”

“What? Why?”

“The boys and I have to leave,” Hannah said. There wasn’t time for more excuses. “We’ll go out through the back door too. Don’t lock it.”

Hannah felt the weight of the checkbook in her hand and remembered it was there. She grabbed her purse from the rack and started stuffing it with the contents of the drawer, all the things she kept close-to-hand in case they needed to bolt.

She zipped the purse, hoping she’d gotten everything as she ran to the stairs. To Elizabeth, she repeated, “We need to leave now. You can play with the boys if you want. After we get out.”

“You’re panicking,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t be embarrassed. Most people panic in crisis situations. Tell me what’s going on.”

Hannah felt her face go red. She had a quick surge of anger, but it splashed away again into the clamor of urgency.

She shoved her emotions away. Her hands kept moving. “My ex-wife is here. She broke Jake’s rib last time she found us. I want to get him out of here before she can do something like that again. I’m sorry. We need to leave immediately. I can pull an extra month’s rent out of my oobi to compensate for your trouble.”

Elizabeth seemed unperturbed; actually, her eyes had brightened. “Have you changed anything in here?”

“What?” Hannah’s hands paused for half a second before resuming. “No. You can rent it out again as soon as we go. Try not to let her know you’ve seen us.”

“Stop, listen to me. I handled worse than this in the army. Go upstairs and hide with your boys. They’ll feel better if you’re there. I’ll handle this, I promise.”

Hannah protested, “Mrs. Allen—”

Elizabeth pointed up the stairs. “Go.”

Hannah looked between Elizabeth and the door. Time was draining away. She almost certainly couldn’t get the boys out cleanly at this point. If Elizabeth could earn them a few minutes, she’d take them.

Hannah nodded. “Okay.” She ran to the foot of the stairs. “Boys! Do what we practiced. Jake, remember, please. I need you to do this.”

Sudden pounding on the door made both women jump. Hannah fled up the stairs, but instead of going into the boys’ room, she hid in the shadows behind the balustrade. Hopefully, they’d be starting to barricade their door now. More importantly, if Elizabeth failed, Hannah couldn’t let her face Abigail’s anger alone. She knew how to take the brunt of it, especially if she didn’t have to protect Jake from trying to help at the same time.

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.