The Unwanted Wife and Her Secret Twins (Mia and Kyle) novel Chapter 451

Mia

Gone.

I'm alone in the garden. My hands are still in the dirt. I can feel it under my nails, gritty and warm, can feel the sun on the back of my neck burning, and there's that smell—dry earth and dying roses and heat.

I should get up. Should go inside. Wash my hands. The thought drifts through without landing anywhere.

The light is changing. The brightness is fading, bleeding out at the edges. The roses lose their color first, turning gray, then the grass, then everything. Like watching a photograph develop in reverse. The world going pale. Going transparent.

Wet.

That's the first thing. Wet.

My face is wet and I don't know why and I can't open my eyes yet. My mouth tastes strange. I try to swallow and my throat is dry. Where am I?

I blink. Nothing happens. Try again. This time my lids separate slightly. My ceiling.

The water stain in the corner. That crack. I've looked at that crack a thousand times.

Home.

I wipe my face. The blanket slides off me as I sit up. Kyle's at the other end of the couch.

He's asleep with his head tilted back against the cushions, mouth slightly open, and in the pale morning light filtering through the curtains—that gray light that belongs to the hour before dawn commits to becoming day—all the tension has drained from his face, smoothed away the lines that bracket his mouth, softened the furrow between his brows that never quite disappears when he's awake.

He looks like someone I used to know, someone I fell in love like a lifetime ago, before everything got complicated and sharp and painful.

"I'm her sister," I say, and the words taste strange in my mouth. "Half-sister."

"One moment."

The line goes quiet but not dead, not disconnected, just empty for a second before music starts filtering through, that horrible instrumental muzak that exists only for waiting, and I sit there holding the phone pressed to my ear, watching Kyle sleep at the other end of the couch.

The music cuts off abruptly mid-phrase and there's another click, and a different voice comes through, male this time, older: "This is Warden Mitchell. You're calling about Taylor Porter?"

"Yes," I say, and I realize I don't know how to finish that sentence. "I just wanted to—"

"Ma'am, I'm sorry to inform you that Ms. Porter passed away early this morning."