Wake to Darkness Read Online Free PDF

head in Mason’s apartment. Two and a half months since the teen had busted into a remote cabin where a madman was about to kill both Mason and Rachel. Jeremy had picked Mason’s gun up off the floor and shot the bastard dead. Just like that. He hadn’t even hesitated. The kid was depressed over the loss of his father, traumatized over having killed a man.
    Mason scuffed into the kitchen where Marie had a pot of coffee brewing, and was taking mugs from the cupboard. She looked his way as he entered and smiled, but her eyes were dead, too. Like Jeremy’s. Her smile was fake. Forced. Her baby girl had been stillborn a few weeks ago. Her husband had killed himself three months before that. The woman was so destroyed he thought a stiff wind would knock her over. But she was putting on a brave face for her boys’ sakes, doing the best she could. It validated for him yet again that he’d done the right thing by hiding Eric’s suicide note. The family was barely holding on as it was. Imagine how much worse it would be if they knew that their beloved husband and father was a serial killer.
    “Sorry we got here so early,” Marie said. “Josh was in the car with his backpack an hour ago. I put him off as long as I could.”
    “It’s fine. I should have been up by now.”
    “It’s your downtime. You know you could skip a weekend if you wanted.”
    “And do what, sleep till noon and stare at the walls all day? Nah. I need these guys around to keep me from going to pot.”
    Once again she smiled because she was supposed to. Her eyes remained stark. Dark circles under them told him she wasn’t sleeping. Her pale skin and sunken cheeks told him she probably wasn’t eating right, either.
    How did you know when a grieving wife or son moved from ordinary mourning into a dangerous depression? Where was the line? He was going to have to find out.
    The coffee was done, so he took the mugs from her and filled them. “Sit down, Marie. I’m cooking you some breakfast.”
    “We already ate.”
    “They did. You didn’t. Bacon and eggs, whaddya say?”
    She shook her head, but accepted the filled mug and sank into a kitchen chair, holding it between her hands as if she was cold. He spotted Joshua running past the window, red parka, knit hat with a fuzzy ball on top like a character from South Park. He’d taken one of the plastic toboggans from out in the barn. Mason had bought them right after the first snow. Josh was heading up the hill out back with it.
    “He loves it here with you,” Marie said. She’d slugged back half the coffee, though it was piping hot.
    “I love having him.” Her boots were still on, making puddles under her chair. He frowned. “Are you in a hurry, Marie?”
    She followed his gaze and shook her head. “No, just absentminded. I’m sorry about the floor.”
    “I’m not worried about the floor. I’m worried about you. ”
    She met his eyes, but quickly shifted hers away. “Some of my girlfriends are taking me out shopping today. They think it’s time I...got over it. I just don’t know how they think that’s possible.”
    “It has to be possible,” he said. “Marie, we all miss Eric, and I know you’re devastated about the baby.”
    “Lilly. Her name was Lilly.”
    He knew that. It was engraved on the headstone with the little angel above the plot right next to her father’s.
    A dozen platitudes came in and out of his mind, things he’d read in Rachel’s books. But he didn’t say any of them, because he thought Marie needed to hold on to her grief a little bit longer. And that was okay. “You have a right to your pain, Marie. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
    “Thank you for that.”
    “When you’re ready to start to heal, though, you put your focus on those boys. They’re just as precious as they were before all the losses you’ve suffered. They need you to come back to them.”
    She thinned her lips and nodded as if she was hearing him, but he didn’t think she was.