Into the Tomorrows (Bleeding Hearts Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

your daddy did to me. Because then you’re only continuing the curse. I named you for it, Trista. Sorrow. It’s your destiny.”
    “Give me the cup,” I said, not letting her words lash at me.
    “Three hundred and fifty.” She held it up higher in her skeletal fingers. I knew it was only a matter of seconds before she accidentally dropped it, forcing her to forfeit the money and leaving me as the one to explain why my grandfather would never be able to touch her cup again.
    “Three fifty,” I agreed, pushing my hand toward her for the cup.
    “Write me a check.”
    “I have cash,” I said, stalking across the room and into my bedroom. On the bed was my knapsack, and inside was all the cash I had left—cash I was going to use to go to Colorado, to see the boyfriend who probably didn’t love me like he should.
    I counted out the bills, smoothing the crumpled twenties, and carried them to the living room.
    “Here,” I said, thrusting them at her and yanking the cup from her grasp. She counted the money quickly, licking her finger as she thumbed through the bills individually.
    I held the cup, smoothing my thumb over the lip and along the curve of the handle, grateful that my grandfather wasn’t losing it. It was the most expensive cup I’d ever purchased, but also the most important.
    When I looked up, my mom was already walking out the door. The squeak of the screen was loud enough to wake my grandfather and the ensuing slam against its metal frame ensured that no one would still be asleep.
    I wrapped the teacup in a towel and placed it in the box, all the more worried that since I’d just gotten it back from her hands that it would disappear.
    After loading the dishes, I walked to my wood-paneled bedroom and finished the packing I’d started before my mother had arrived.

Chapter Five
    T hree years and fifteen days had passed since Ellie had died. It felt like an eternity.
    I placed the sole framed photo I owned into a box and looked at the picture of Ellie and me mid-laugh. My fingers traced her face over the glass and I allowed myself that moment to remember who she was. The thought was better than the one I plagued myself with: who she could have been.
    I placed her daisy headband on top of the frame and then covered both with packing paper.
    The box was the size of a microwave, but it held just about all my personal possessions apart from my clothing. A couple yearbooks, some movie and concert tickets, her lotion and the frame and headband. The fact that all I had of her was this box made me angry.
    The five stages of grief had been just three, over and over. Rewind, play, rewind, play, rewind, play.
    Three years later and I was still trying to pretend it hadn’t happened. Three years and I was still so angry, with myself, with Colin. I’d skipped bargaining altogether. There was nothing of me to offer. So now I lived in a perpetual depression, accented only when the wheel of grief rolled around to denial and anger again.
    A therapist had told me acceptance would come someday, but I didn’t want to accept that this was my reality, even three years later.
    I lived with the ache like it was another limb, because I lost so much of myself when Ellie died that the only thing I had left in its place was the constant aching.
    Colin had told me more than once that I was slipping away. He didn’t say what he meant, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out he meant many things: slipping from him, slipping from me.
    Three years later, I was still with Colin, but the word with was merely a four-letter word, because I wasn’t with him, not physically or mentally. Every day, I was with my grief.
    About a year after Ellie died, I’d begun writing little poems here and there, nothing noteworthy or even profound. The college counselor I’d seen when I’d requested to withdraw from my classes the following year had encouraged me to express myself, instead of letting everything I was feeling die inside of