That grabbed my attention. Any jewelry either of us had ever worn had been of the same variety: cheap and costume. “Like a diamond ring, you mean?”
“I think so,” she gave me a sheepish grin.
“That’s so wonderful!”
“Yeah,” my sister’s expression became dreamy. “Once he gets back from his deployment, we’ll see what happens.” She sat there like that as I kept eating. Damn, this kid was going to make me gain a million pounds. Then, her dreaminess dissipated. “Moll, you’re not going to go months without visiting again, are you?”
I put my sandwich back down, feeling guilty. All our lives she’d depended on me, and I’d let her down. I couldn’t do it again. Somehow, I’d have to keep in better touch with her, no matter what the Varassos had me doing.
“No. The job was kind of challenging in the beginning…” Understatement of the year. “But I’ve got everything down now. I’ll be able to make more time.”
“It’s just… I’ve missed you, you know?”
I took her hand in mine. “I missed you, too.” Then, I brought it to my still flat abdomen. “Besides, you’re about to have a niece or nephew. I’ll need Aunt Tara to help me out.”
She threw me a brilliant smile. “Aunt Tara. I like the sound of that.”
After we finished, I waited as our server went off to find our bill. I packaged up a couple of bags of leftovers and glanced out the window. The sun was setting outside, casting a bright pink glow to some low-lying clouds along the horizon. Even though I knew it’d be freezing cold out there, the night was still beautiful.
The crowds were less thick than usual, but a few people continued to brave the low temperatures. Several minutes had passed, and the server hadn’t returned. The sunset was over now, making things outside seem so much darker. This part of Philadelphia wasn’t known for being dangerous, but I decided to call a taxi rather than attempting to hail one.
It didn’t look that scary out there, but I felt the need to be more cautious, especially now that I had more than just my life to consider.
Once I pulled out my cell, I saw that I’d missed a couple of calls from Luca. One had come in a few hours ago and one a minute before. I wondered why I hadn’t heard the cell go off, then remembered, I’d turned it off during the matinee earlier. There were two voicemails. I clicked on the oldest to listen to it first.
“Molly, just wanted to check in with you and make sure you’re still doing okay,” his deep musical voice buzzed in my ear. Even though it’d only been two weeks since I’d heard it, I missed it. I missed him. There was a significant pause as if he’d considered adding something else, then, “Call me back when you get this.”
But instead of calling him back, I clicked on the next message. As I did, I registered that it was shorter than the first. “Molly,” he yelled, sounding panicked. It was so loud I nearly dropped the phone. “Go hide in the restroom of that café and lock the door. Crouch in a corner and wait for me to come get you.”
“What’s wrong?” Tara asked from beside me.
“That was my boss.” I didn’t know what exactly was going on, but I could tell by Luca’s tone that he meant business. “He told me to go hide in the café’s restroom.” Quickly, I took in our surroundings with a more critical eye, and though I didn’t see anything, I stood. “I think we should do what he said.”
“What?” my sister as
ked me, incredulous. “That doesn’t make sense. And how does he even know where you—”
But at the sound of crackling glass, she quit speaking. While I felt something hot piercing several places on my body, I looked up to see Tara clutch her neck. Blood began to spurt forth from behind her hands, and in the next second, she dropped.
Time crashed to a stop, then seemed to blast by in incoherent dollops. Something ungodly had happened, but I couldn’t make my mind comprehend it. All I knew was my sister needed me. I tried to reach out to her, tried to help her, but I was falling, too.
My head crashed into the corner of the table, causing my world to go black, then white, then black again. I landed beside Tara, not even able to absorb when I’d left my seat, not able to move, not able to see.
Pain ricocheted through me, every kind of pain I could imagine, but though I screamed, I couldn’t hear it. It was as if I’d gone deaf as well as blind. And then my vision came back but only partially. I couldn’t control where I was looking or what I saw. The room seemed to revolve around me, the spinning too much to take in. I slipped into and out of reality.
There was a brief moment of darkness, then an image of Tara laying next to me.
More darkness.
Then I saw a puddle of scarlet seeping from around my sister’s throat.
The longest darkness yet.
Then, Tara’s eyes, open yet sightless.
And when the darkness descended again, I doubted there would be any waking from it.
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