REST IN PEACE (Eva Rae Thomas FBI Mystery Book 15) by Willow Rose

Author:Willow Rose [Rose, Willow]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BUOY MEDIA LLC
Published: 2024-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 41

THEN:

The soft glow of the table lamp threw shadows across Sarah’s face as she perched on the edge of her sofa, a glass of red wine cradled in her hand. Her thumb brushed against the stem, tracing circles that mirrored the turmoil swirling within her. Victoria's laughter, once the soundtrack of this room, now felt like a haunting melody from a distant past. The silence was oppressive, punctuated only by the faint ticking of the wall clock—each second a stark reminder of her daughter's fragility.

Victoria was back in the hospital, and Steven was with her, spending the night, never leaving her side. Every time she went in, Sarah worried she would never return home.

"Come on, Sarah," she murmured to herself, a half-hearted attempt to break the spell of anxiety that had woven itself around her heart. Her voice sounded alien in the quiet.

She pushed herself up with reluctant resolve, the cushion springing back into place. With its dimmed lights and the lingering scent of vanilla candles, the living room held too many ghosts tonight. She needed something else, something tangible to tether her to a time less complicated and less heavy with dread.

The office seemed like a refuge in comparison, the moonlight spilling through the open blinds casting a checkerboard pattern across the floor. Sarah moved toward the antique desk nestled in the corner.

"Old memories," she whispered, almost a prayer, as she slid open the stubborn drawer that always stuck a little on the left side.

Inside were the remnants of a life before illness, hospitals, and hushed conversations behind closed doors. A life where the biggest worries were scraped knees and monsters under the bed, not test results and treatment plans.

"Let's see what you've got for me," she said, the words meant to inject some semblance of lightness into the task at hand. Her fingers danced over envelopes and faded concert tickets, each touch a balm for her aching soul.

Underneath a pile of discarded papers, Sarah's hand brushed against the cool surface of glossed photographs. She drew them out slowly, spreading them across the mahogany desk like a mosaic of memories frozen in time. Each image was a captured echo of Victoria's life—her first steps, toothless grin, and the way her laughter seemed to fill the room even in stillness.

"Look at you," Sarah murmured, tracing the outline of her daughter's face in a photo where Victoria wore a bright yellow sundress, the garden behind her blooming with promise. The next few pictures showed the same vibrant scenes, but with each passing year, the girl in the images remained unchanged, as if time itself had become an unreliable narrator.

Her fingers lingered on a particular photograph taken on Victoria's twelfth birthday. Balloons framed the tiny figure seated at the head of the table, her smile hesitant between the candles' glow. Yet the child in the picture bore the delicate features of someone much younger, her illness casting a shadow that no amount of light could dispel. She couldn’t even walk anymore and was confined to that darn wheelchair all day long.

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