Page 37 of One Breath After Another

But even through the tears that she was trying to hold back, Penny could see Naz wasn’t happy. She knew it wasn’t because of her, but that didn’t make the situation any better.

“It’s going to be okay, right?” she asked.

“You focus on you ... whatever you need, getting better, just focus on you.” Naz shrugged, adding, “That’s all Roz and I ever wanted you to do. We’ll handle the rest.”

But how?

She decided it was better not to ask.

INTERLUDE: 1.

Present Day ...

“HEY, Penny.”

Whether it was the shock of someone saying her name, or just the fact that they had managed to sneak up on her in the forest behind Naz and Roz’s property, it still earned a reaction from Penny. She hadn’t heard the approach from her left until the new voice joined a silent conversation she’d been having inside her head while the memories raced for attention in her mind.

Despite her years of training to stand calm and steady no matter the situation, she let out a yelp and fell backward when she stumbled over an exposed root of a tree. The white strands of her hair made a curtain over her eyes as her palms hit the ground to catch her fall from turning into something much worse.

A quiet, child-like laugh rang out in the forest. The sound was almost musical and a total contrast to the way her heart thumped loudly in her chest.

“Sorry,” her new companion said, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Penny didn’t bother to get up, or even fix her hair. Instead, she pushed sideways and came to sit right on her ass, so she could stare directly at the guest who had joined her in the forest. He was maybe three and half feet tall, not quite four, if that. Dark hair. Soul-deep eyes. She found familiarity in the softness of his boyish features. Even the way his grin tilted a little more on the right side was a smirk she had seen time and time again.

She didn’t need to ask his name.

She already knew.

“Cross,” she said.

The boy shrugged. “Well, everybody calls me little Cross when they think I can’t hear. I don’t like that very much. But since Grandpapa doesn’t like being called Senior, I have to deal with it. Or that’s what he said.”

His words were clear. His sentences, smart. For his age, anyway.

“And you are, right—Penny, I mean?”

She stared at the boy, blinking as if he might disappear in the next minute. She was still trying to figure out why in the hell he was even in the woods. Where were his parents? Was this something he did on the regular?

Hell ...

Penny hadn’t seen his face since he was six months old. Not once in all the years since she left had she even been graced with a picture of the boy as he grew. She always wondered, of course ... did he keep his father’s features, or change to look more like his mom?

She missed a lot.

About him.

His first steps.

Those first words.

Even his first day at school.

“You don’t talk?” Cross asked. “Ma says you were always quiet.”

She swallowed hard, knowing what she needed to tell the boy because she wasn’t even supposed to be here in the first place. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not—”

“Yeah, you’re Penny. I have pictures.”