It had made the decision to end Brian’s life that much easier, and it helped to settle a little of the bitter in his gut now.
He squashed his feelings, and focused on the woman in front of him.
Everyone was right that it would take time.
For both of them.
“I need to get going, before Rick comes barging in here.” He gave her a small smile, and started to usher her out the door. Set on walking her out to the car, but she turned, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him like she used to.
“Please be safe,” she whispered, before letting go and walking out the door. He walked behind her slowly, stopping on the edge of his porch, watching as she climbed in Rick’s truck.
Rick nodded to him and started to back out.
A sigh left him as he stared out over the expanse around him. The sounds of nature surrounding him, soothing the emotion of the last few minutes.
He didn’t know what was going to come from this trip, but he could feel it in his gut that change was coming.
Present Day
A knock on the door startled her from her sleep on the bathroom floor where she had passed out.
Again.
Her eyes fluttered open, immediately seeing the peels from the orange she had snuck lying on the floor next to her.
The desperation had gotten to be too much, and she had caved.
She had never again planned to sneak down to the kitchen again, not after the last time, but hunger makes a person do crazy things.
“Winter, darling, he is calling for you,” Rosita said from outside the doorway, before turning the knob and letting herself in.
Rosita paused, frowning down at her and the orange peels next to her, evidence of her late-night trip to the kitchen.
“What did you do?” the older woman whispered in horror, then quickly shut the door and knelt down next to her.
She didn’t speak.
There wasn’t anything she could say even if she wanted to.
“Oh sweet girl, why an orange? The smell will be on your fingers. An apple I could hide from him, but this … Oh.” The woman moaned, her words sending a chill down Winter’s spine.
“There were no apples,” she croaked out, no more than a bare whisper.
In the last two years that she had been locked away in this house it had always been a rule, at least with Ernesto, to never speak. One of the many rules that she had come to dread.
