Her Sisters Baby – Emma Bennet

She was tired but very pleased with what she’d managed to get done. Her flat was almost ready to be rented out and would be available to view in a couple of days. Everything was packed and sorted, it would only need one more, very laden, journey back to Samson’s house she thought and she’d be done.

She’d been ruthless with her culling and the furniture was staying in place, so everything was practically ready to go. The income from the let would comfortably cover her mortgage payments with quite a bit leftover. She’d even remembered to call the number Yvonne the social worker had given her and left a message giving Samson’s house as Alana and her new address.

It would be good to have more of her things around her again, even if she wasn’t living in her own home. She had a load of stuff in the cab of the pick-up truck outside, but it would have to wait until the morning to be brought in; she didn’t want to wake Alana by banging around dragging stuff up the stairs. She was sure the boxes under the tarp on the truck bed would be fine where they were: the weather was dry and it was a very nice neighbourhood.

The downstairs was in darkness when she opened the front door, presumably Samson had gone to bed already. She dumped her bag on the floor of the hallway, exhausted after her long day and with dealing with the aftermath of her emotions from the day before, but sighed, turned back around and picked it up again: this was Samson’s hallway, she couldn’t leave her stuff lying around everywhere.

She crept up the stairs as quietly as she could so as not to wake Samson or Alana.

The road was deserted, illuminated only by the beams of her headlights stabbing out, piercing the thick, encompassing darkness. Her mind was a maelstrom of emotion and her cheeks wet with tears. Anger was dominant; at the situation, but mainly at herself, and she realised she was pressing down on the accelerator far too aggressively and needed to slow down. She gently eased the pressure on the pedal. The dashboard display showed it was just after 11:30 pm.

But she wasn’t tired. Running on adrenalin, she was determined to right some wrongs tonight. Even if that resolution hadn’t gone well so far. The past… well, she’d made a lot of mistakes in life. Hurt too many people. It was time she made amends for what she could. This wasn’t how she’d planned to spend her evening.

By this time she’d usually be tucked up in bed, her little girl asleep in her cot at the end of it. But she’d be back home, back with her precious daughter, in a few hours. She glanced across at her bag on the passenger seat, needing, at a deep level, to triple check the letter was still poking out of it. It had been hard to write.

And impossible to send. She’d had it for ages, re-reading it, re- writing it, trying to find the words to ask for forgiveness. In-person, she thought she’d flounder, freeze up or say the wrong thing, her intentions not be believed. And who could be surprised at that? She’d gone between giving up on the whole thing, then gathering her resolve. So, she’d decided to put things down on paper. But afraid of being rejected, she hadn’t been brave enough to send it. She was going to do this, she reiterated like a mantra.

Today. Now. She’d felt she should at least take it in person. Atonement in some way. She looked back at the road. Christ! She hit the brakes as hard she could, instinctively yanking the steering wheel and swerving violently to avoid the black cat fleetingly registered in that sliver of a second, dead ahead in her path.

Too much, too late. The car drove straight off the road and smashed into the barrier.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 5b6570a3c5097b59
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 847,686 bytes (0.808 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 145
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 251.94 minutes
• Total Words: 50,388
• Total Characters: 278,551
• Average Words per Page: 347.5
• Average Characters per Page: 1921.04

Most Frequent Words

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