One Last Breath by Sarah Sutton (speld decodable readers txt) 📗

be able to resist speaking to her. After all, for so many years he had written to her, hoping she would write back or call.

Strange, she thought. After all these years, she now had more reason than a dream to believe someone else was in the room that night of her mother’s murder. It was a validation she had never felt before. In a way, it felt good. She wasn’t crazy. But it also burdened her with more uncertainty. She had no idea who it could’ve been, and it troubled her.

All night, she had been digging into every depth of her memory for a clue, but she still couldn’t find one. She thought of moments in her childhood, positive memories and negative ones. She thought of moments with her grandmother when she was a child. Could she have hinted at something? But no matter what point in time she chose to focus on, she was left without a conclusion. She continued to think of moments in her childhood, but as each memory surfaced, her eyes grew heavier. Eventually, she was barely able to hold them open at all, and she soon faded into sleep.

***

Tara ran, the tall, uncut grass tickling her bare feet. The sky was bluer than she’d ever seen it. The sun was warm against her skin, and it made her smile grow wider. She wore a long pink summer dress. Her mother had sewn it herself, and it flapped against her legs as she ran, faster and faster. She was ready now. She took a deep breath as she threw her hands in the air and then flung her body sideways, letting her hands touch the grass, and then her feet.

“I did it!” she screamed.

A friend at school had been teaching her how to do a cartwheel, but this was the first time she had actually succeeded. She looked around her fenced-in yard, slightly off balance until her eyes met their target. Her mother sat on the steps to their porch. Her smile was wide, making Tara beam with pride. She began to clap.

“Excellent!” she yelled. “That was perfect!”

Tara giggled as she whizzed excitedly across the lawn. Her mother stood up, her arms open. Tara leapt into them. Her mother hugged her and kissed her on the forehead, but then Tara pulled away. She had too much energy to feel constrained. She reached for her mother’s hand and then used all the bit of weight she had to pull her mother toward the lawn.

“Now you try, Mommy!”

Her mother laughed. Tara was only five years old, and her mother didn’t budge from her pull. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, baby,” she replied as she smiled down at Tara. “I’m not as quick and flexible as you.”

“Please, Mommy!” Tara pulled harder on her mother’s hand, and when she still didn’t budge, she reached higher, grabbing hold of her forearm. She tightened her grip and pulled hard.

“Tara, ow!” her mother yelled.

Tara instinctively let go, the playfulness immediately dissipating.

“I’m sorry,” Tara said as her mother began to rub her arm. This was the second time this week that Tara had touched one of her bruises, and it had scared her just the same. Tara looked at her mother’s forearm, which had the marks of a grip held too tight. The bruise was large, spanning half of her mother’s small forearm, showing the size of her father’s hand.

“You can’t pull on people like that,” her mother snapped as she took a seat back down. The mood had abruptly changed. It was confusing for Tara, being so young. How could her father grab her, pull her, and even hit her at times? Yet Tara only pulled her mother’s arm to play, and she was the one getting in trouble. Even at such a young age, the injustice did not sit well with her.

“I just wanted you to play with me,” Tara said sadly, but her mother only raised her eyebrows in scorn and Tara’s face fell to her feet. She sat down on the stairs next to her mother. She didn’t have the urge to run through the grass anymore. She didn’t have the desire to try another cartwheel. There was a sadness in the air that muffled it all, and it hung heavy on them both in silence.

Tara tried to fix it. “What’s for dinner tonight?”

“We’ll order pizza,” her mother replied, trying to force a smile.

Tara loved pizza nights, and her face lit up at the mention. But it wasn’t just the food that excited her. She also knew that it meant something else too…

“Daddy won’t be home?”

Her mother sighed. “Not tonight, baby, not tonight.”

***

Tara’s eyes popped open. The room was still dark, and John still lay sound asleep next to her, but she suddenly felt more awake than ever. She knew it wasn’t just a dream. She remembered that day, those words—her mother saying her father wouldn’t be home. They were words that had been spoken more than once. How could I have forgotten?

Her father was a plumber and construction worker, but not the type that would work on building houses. All she understood was that he installed fueling systems. There was a point in time where he worked for a company that required him to travel out of town. It was the reason Tara was given each time she asked why her father wasn’t going to be home for dinner, and each time he didn’t come home until a couple days later. It wasn’t too often, but now, as Tara stared at the darkness above her, she wondered, was there any truth in it at all?

Chapter Fourteen

Sofia lay terrified, flat on the basement floor, her hands tied behind her back. He was nearby, sitting at a computer desk, but his eyes were on something else. A TV was mounted against the wall, and he stared at it intensely. It was the news he was watching, coverage of the