Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 451(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90260 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 451(@200wpm)___ 361(@250wpm)___ 301(@300wpm)
“Look at them,” my father says, shaking his head. “Women. You’d swear they’re going to a funfair.”
I don’t miss the note of pride in his voice.
Staring after the car, he muses, “Arranging this wedding made your mother more certain of herself. Assertive almost.”
“It’s good for her,” I agree, watching the car as my mother turns at the gates and follows the road that snakes along the cliff. “Maybe we should give her a job in the business, something that’ll keep her busy and that she’ll enjoy.” Something that’ll get her out of the goddamn isolation of the kitchen.
The bodyguard nods in greeting as he drives past us.
“A job?” my father asks. “Like what?”
I shrug. “Event organizer. She can make travel arrangements and plan dinner parties. She seems to be enjoying the running of the wedding, and she’s good at it.”
He makes a non-committal sound.
The more I think about it, the more I know it’s a good idea. My mother spends some time working at charities, but that only occupies her for a few hours every month.
I follow the path of the car with my gaze as I ponder the possibility that part of my mother’s low self-esteem may come from not having a purpose other than taking care of us, not that taking care of a family isn’t important. Part of her insecurity comes from the fact that she feels inferior because she’s uneducated. Another part stems from her roots. The wedding gave her a goal and a challenge. It makes her feel needed and useful.
The sun rays bounce off the shiny bodywork of the Mercedes sports model, reflecting back to me like from a mirror and temporarily blinding me. I squint. The sparkling turquoise sea at the bottom of the cliff makes a pretty contrast with the azure blue of the sky. The summer heat is already stifling. A trickle of sweat runs down my back.
The car is moving too fast, speeding toward the bend. My father says something and turns toward the house. My mother is a good driver. She should be braking.
But she doesn’t.
I take it all in like an out-of-body experience—the warm weather, the glorious view, and the racing car. It feels like a dream. Unreal.
The tires lose traction on the tar. The car skids toward the hairpin turn. My mother overcorrects, pulling too sharply to the left.
Someone says, “No.” Me.
The car hits the barrier and goes into a spin. The back wheels go over the cliff first. The car dives, flips, and falls. It falls and falls while horror rips through my chest and I grope through the air as if I can stop it. And then it slams onto the rocks on its roof with the sickening thud of crushing metal.
CHAPTER
THIRTY
Angelo
I have no recollection of how I got there. All I know is that I’m half-falling, half-sliding down the bottom of the cliff and clawing my way over rocks to the car wreck. The voice screaming my mother’s and sister’s names belongs to a mad man, a wild person, not to me.
Sirens sound somewhere above me. I have no idea who called an ambulance. My only notion is getting them out of there.
I reach the driver’s side first.
“Maman!”
I yank on the door. It’s smashed in, the metal bent. The window exploded. The airbag too. It’s already deflated. My mother hangs upside down, strapped in by her safety belt. Her hair falls down like a neat curtain, hiding her face. It’s still smooth and brushed out from how she styled it this morning. Not disheveled and unkept. Not full of blood.
“Maman. I’ve got you.” I reach inside and feel for the clasp of her belt next to the door. “You’re going to be all right. Hold on, Adeline. I’m coming. Hold on.”
I brace my mother with an arm as I free the clip. Her weight sags against me, her mere forty-five kilos weighing me down.
She could’ve injured her neck or her spine. The logical human in me knows I should wait for the paramedics, but the being inside me that’s ruled by instinct only knows how to break her fall to not hit her head on the roof. It only knows how to drag her, shoulders first, through the narrow space of the condensed window.
My father’s car is sturdy. It has a strong framework. It was made to withstand any impact. It could’ve been worse. The car hasn’t been flattened.
It’s not that bad.
It’s not that bad.
Her pelvis gets stuck. Someone grips my biceps and pulls me away. I’m swinging my arms, letting my fists go feral. I land a sucker punch on a man’s jaw.
More hands hold me back as others spread my mother out on the rocks. She’s whole and clean except for the trickle of blood running from a cut on her forehead, but I don’t need the medic to tell me she’s broken. I see it in her eyes, the brown eyes I inherited, in how the light has gone out of them.