“Disappoint you?”Her mother’s display of honest emotion would have been sweet, touching even, but Elodie saw the snake coiling just beneath the surface.“How?By having my own opinion?”
“Dammit, Elodie!”Gwen snarled and struck the bannister.“When your father and I made the decision to bring you into this world, the lead in the Gestation Unit asked if there were any traits we wanted enhanced or stunted.I told him to let nature run its course.”Gwen climbed two steps at once, her long legs flicking out like a praying mantis.“Of all the things you’ve done, and you’ve done plenty, becoming a sympathizer is the one thing that will make me regret turning those natal programmersdown!”
Her mother’s words hung in the air, stifling Elodie’s breath and eating away at herflesh.
Rhett leaned into the stairwell, still chompingaway.
Elodie’s soul retreated, curling into the depths of her heart.“I need to go change.”Her legs were putty as they carried her up the final few stairs.
“I didn’t want to say any of that, but someone had to tell her the truth,” Gwen loudly whispered to Rhett.“You’re naïve, Elodie,” she said, descending the stairs, “but I love you.I’m trying to protect you.”Her mother’s voice echoed within her, far away and paralyzingly close at the same time.“I had to tell her, Rhett.I had to.”Gwen’s heels clicked on the marble as she slipped past Rhett and made a noble retreat to the kitchen.
At the bottom of the stairs, Rhett cleared his throat and flicked an orange chunk from his pristine white tee.“We can, uh, go someplace when you’re ready, El.No rush.”
Elodie’s chest heaved a dry sob as she reached the second floor.She forced herself to walk in slow, even paces to her room.Tears breached her vision as she closed the door behind her and ran to the window.She threw it open and inhaled thesun-warmedevening.The branches of the pink magnolia tree reached out to her, its verdant leaves whispering with each gust of crisp air.
She couldn’t go back downstairs.She wouldn’t.But it would only be a matter of time before Gwen’s impatient footsteps brought her to Elodie’s door.Her mother wouldn’t let those words stain her home.She’d wring her hands and click her stilettos and pout those lips until the need to cleanse the space overtook her desire to ignore the distressing blemish.Elodie had seen it over and over again between her mother and her father until the only things that proved he lived there were his clothes and the faint scent of cedar that haunted the hall outside of her parent’sroom.
Daniel Benavidez was in a constant state of leaving.Elodie understood the impulse all toowell.
Rhett’s laughter wafted into Elodie’s room in muffled bursts.Her stomach soured, and she caught another refreshing breath of fresh air.Her fiancé had stood there, watching as her mother chipped away at her.Then he’d offered to take her someplace after she changed.And where was he now?
Elodie’s eyes burned.
He was supposed to loveher.
Theywere supposed to love her.
But this didn’t feel likelove.
The narrow peaks of distant pine trees pierced the sun as it drained golden orange into the horizon.
Someone had to tell her thetruth.
The truth was a funny thing.Like a pond during winter.Safe, stable.Until it wasn’t.And the ground tumbled away, dropping you into an existence so cold the maw of death could look like a refuge.
Elodie wouldn’t wait around for anymore of Gwen’s truths.She had her own to determine.And from now on, Elodie would make sure her feet were always on solid ground.
Quickly, Elodie stripped out of her scrubs and pulled on her favorite pair of black leggings and a cotton tee before stuffing her feet into her tennis shoes.She shoved aside the row of rocks she’d collected on the banks of the Columbia and climbed onto the windowsill.She studied the tree’s broad limbs, her cheeks puffing as she inhaled a large, contemplative breath and let it out slowly.
Violet Jasmin Royale would do it.Vi would leap out,spring-
loaded, shimmy down the big magnolia, and be gone, vanish, never to be heard from again.
Elodie flexed her fingers and reached out.She grabbed the fat tree limb and pushed off the windowsill.Air squished out of her torso in a wheeze as her stomach hit the massive branch.
Not quitespring-loaded, but a leap toward freedom, however temporary.
Elodie swung her leg over and straddled the branch before shimmying backward down its sharp pitch toward the trunk.She winced as the rough bark clawed through her leggings.
She should have climbed more trees when she was younger.She should have climbedanytrees when she was younger.
The trunk met her back, and she peered over the branch she straddled.When she’d looked up toward her window from the ground, the first of the tree’s many branches had never lookedthishigh.But now, sitting on top of it, she was pretty sure she was fifty feet in theair.
You’re naïve, Elodie, and I’m trying to protect you.
She huffed.
“Your eyes are five and a half feet higher than your feet, so it’s not actually as far as it seems.Stop scaring yourself and jump off the damn thing.”Without another thought, she did justthat.
