AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Wake up.
Wake—
13
I gasp,dragging cold, dry air into my seizing lungs. I clutch at my chest, drawing in breath after breath. My heart hammers painfully in my chest and a metallic taste coats my tongue.
My vision is black. I can’t see a thing.
But then, one shuddering breath after another, I realize that isn’t true. The moon sends a silver sliver of light through my window to spear my bed. It illuminates the room enough for me to see.
I’m in my bedroom. In Geneva.
The cold air, stone cool and still, coats the room in silence. There’s only the sound of my quick, tight breath.
“It was a dream,” I whisper, my voice tight and ragged, as if I truly did hold my breath until my lungs were screaming.
“Mummy?”
I glance to the door as it squeaks open and Mila tiptoes in. She’s in yellow-striped pajamas, her hair bed-messy and poofed around her head in a little halo.
“Hey, you.” I hold out my hand to her.
She edges through the room, around the ottoman and the armoire, past my vanity, her footsteps soft on the thick carpet. When she reaches my bed she climbs up onto the high four-poster, rustling the comforter as she does.
“I heard you shout,” she whispers once she’s snuggled down into the blankets and has buried herself against my side.
“I’m sorry. It was a dream.”
“A bad dream?” She looks at me, her head resting next to mine on the pillow.
She smells like bubble bath and the baby shampoo she still insists on using. I drop a kiss to her forehead, desperately happy she’s here and I’m here, and that it was truly just a dream.
Anywhere without Mila is a place I wouldn’t want to be. Not in real life.
“Not a bad dream. Just a dream.”
“A good one then?” she asks, then she lets out a big, jaw-cracking yawn.
“Go to sleep,” I whisper, stroking her downy-soft hair back from her head.
“Can we go to the beach in the morning? With Uncle Daniel?”
I smile. Her eyes are already fluttering closed. She lets out a soft exhale, and then her chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm.
I settle back into the soft mattress and sink into the silence. I relax into the comfort of knowing my daughter is near, that I have a phone and internet, and that I’m Fiona Abry here.
Then I clasp my left hand, where I’m still holding the gold pocket watch. I haven’t let it go.
I hold it up and let the moonlight catch the dial and the steadily ticking hands. It’s only 2:12 in the morning.
There are still hours left to dream.
The question is, do I want to?
Do I want to go back to that place, to that man, where I’m not Fiona but someone else, in another life?
I could be someone else there. I could do all the things I’m scared to do in this life. I could discover what it is that the whisper in my heart has been trying to tell me.
