2020: Emergency Exit Read Online Free PDF

Quantico, Virginia, Kate was working on her education degree, which suited her enduring patience and diverse skill set rather well. Danny was lucky to have her.
    I was equally thankful for Kate. She and her mom took Hayley in for the first three years after Sophie passed, before Hayley moved up north with me. I might not have done the right thing by leaving Hayley—definitely debatable—but living with the Beckers gave her someone in Kate and Mrs. Becker (who’d lost her own spouse), to help her adjust to life without her mother. Kate had always been around our family and had a great head on her shoulders. Hayley had forever trusted her like a big sister. Kate kept Hayley out of trouble and focused on academics like I wouldn’t have been able to. I was so self-absorbed I might not have noticed Hayley getting a Mike Tyson style tattoo across her entire face. Okay, so that’s a slight exaggeration.
    Hayley was now eighteen. Dark complexioned with shoulder-length brown hair, she was tall, athletic and beautiful like her mother. She was additionally blessed with Sophie’s intelligence and selflessness, and Danny’s “street smarts.” Boys would have considered her the complete package, but she hadn’t yet found one that met her expectations or interests. Or they couldn’t keep up with her. That was most likely the case. A straight-A student since fifth grade, she had recently accepted a full academic/archery scholarship to Michigan State. I’m sure I had Kate, her mom, and probably even The Hunger Games to thank for that. Most people would kill for Hayley’s archery skillset. Probably not the best choice of words, I know .
     
    I could second-guess a billion decisions I’ve made in my life, but some of them, despite my worst efforts, turned out pretty well. I can’t take any of the credit for the kids and their successes because I wasn’t nearly as involved in their lives as I should have been. I was selfish. I was wrong. I know that now, but at the time nothing else seemed right. If I’d been half as committed to Sophie while she was alive as I was after she passed, a lot would have been different between us. You can’t make things up to a dead person, but I tried anyway.
    That’s not to say I didn’t know how lucky I was before I lost her. Fortunately, I’d woken up in time. Sophie was amazing in so many ways. Her ability to forgive me being one of her most ridiculous or admirable traits, depending on which side you saw it from. I missed every part of her a little more each day. Her beautiful laugh, her shy dimpled smile, and the glow of a proud mother around our kids—I missed it all. I could still see her holding each of our babies in her arms at the hospital, pushing them in the swing, dancing with them in the living room, swimming with them in the lake. Every thing. Any thing. But man, her laugh.
    As the tears running down my cheek began to compete with the raindrops on the window next to me, I wiped my eyes and tuned back in to Mom and Dad’s conversation up front. Dad was talking about how unexpected this was in America. How this is something you’d expect in the poor, hungry, and sick countries. And yet, he said, “We still should have seen it coming.” He was right. America had made an awful lot of enemies recently, but I never thought they could hit us like this.
    Here we were, caught in a real-life reenactment of Red Dawn , that movie where the high school kids form a rebel band to combat against a West Coast invasion. But we weren’t looking for a fight. There was no one for us to save. And we didn’t get to just sit and hide. We had to run, right through the middle of those who wanted us dead, and towards the same place every American would be heading—if they’d also gotten the message. Like a herd of elephants crossing a thinly iced lake, we’d be hard to miss, and any misstep by one of us could be the last for all of us.
    I couldn’t help but wonder what fate awaited us. If we did