As I Breathe (One Breath at a Time: Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

lovely together that I leaned back against my pillow and listened. Before I knew it, I had fallen asleep.
    At first they only visited me at night, after my parents tucked me in. Night after night, they sang to me. I loved all their voices, and their songs. I had to obey my mother so I only listened, without any reaction, and refrained from singing along, too. This wasn’t easy at my young age. For the longest time, I refused to communicate with them.
    Weeks passed by without my uttering a word or even acknowledging their voices. Other than, falling asleep to their magical tunes, I pretended they didn’t exist, although I enjoyed their songs. I honestly did my best to ignore them until they began calling out my name.
    “ Brielle—Brielle—Brielle. Talk to me. No. Talk to me. Brielle, you only need to talk to me...” They all spoke in unison—at once. Their voices mingled like an untamed symphony. I found it funny—their parents must not have taught them any manners.
    Without thinking I shouted out, “You’re going to get me in trouble. I’m not allowed to talk to you guys anymore,” I firmly said, and then hoped that they didn’t hear me, or that my parents, whose room was next to mine, didn’t hear me either.
    It was too late; I had broken the ice. They knew I could hear them now. This ignited a rampage of banter between them. They were all pining for my attention.
    I did the best I could to ignore all of their buzzing, but it was overwhelming. I had good intentions to obey my mother, but you know what they say about good intentions—yep—paves the road to Hell.
    All of my good intentions were of no use. The voices wouldn’t retreat to where they had come from, which of course, inadvertently forced me to talk to them. After all, I couldn’t tell them to go away without speaking to them, now could I?
    Still, as my mother had demanded of me, I wouldn’t dare yell at them again. Sometimes, I could hear them chatting amongst themselves in the corners of my brain, and their words were sad, morose and filled with pain. So to holler at them would have been mean and cruel.
    I contrived a simple plan. The voices and I made a pact that they could hang out in the rooms of my mind, on one condition—they couldn’t talk to me when my family and friends were around. They agreed half-heartedly. From that point on, I learned to coexist with them, and they lived by my rules. Hey, it was my head. Poor things; I was a bossy kid.
    I never asked them why they existed in the first place, at least not during my learning years. At the time, it just didn’t seem important to me. In the end, I liked them and they seemed to like me. They became a part of my daily life. However, as the years passed by, there were times they made it easy for me to holler at them, and I did. They could be moody, disruptive and devilish. But hey, it takes one to know one. I could be an angel or the dickens too!
     
    ***
     
    Often, I was bored with nothing fun to do and eavesdropping became one of my favorite childhood pastimes. Actually, eavesdropping was something I continued to do most of my life. I found that I could learn a lot about people when they had no idea I was listening. It became a sneaky occurrence that I mastered. I believe that this was what quickened my passion to write mystery books years later. It became my favorite genre, along with romance of course.
    From the dining room adjacent the kitchen, I hid behind the door, barely breathing, so that I could listen to a conversation between my grandmother Katie and my mother.
    Grandmother Katie, my favorite and only grandmother was my mother’s mom. My father’s mother passed away when he was seventeen years old.
    While I typically loved listening in on conversations I wasn’t intended to hear, this was a conversation that I wished I had missed.
    “ Mom, I caught her talking to them again. I can’t deal with this again...once was enough. I begged her to stop years ago. It is now