Healer (The Healer Series) by B.N. Toler Page B

velvet. “Please say yes.” He gazed at me with his dark eyes.
    My heart wanted to leap out of my chest and run away with him, but my mind kept reminding me that I would be abandoning my brothers and I would break Lucy’s heart. On the other hand, going to college without Thomas felt like a future of nothing but despair.
    He pull ed away and looked at me again. “Say you’ll go, please,” he begged once more.
    I stared at him blankly. “Can I think about it?”
    His eyes dropped , and disappointment immediately consumed his face. As we dried ourselves off and dressed, silence hung over us like a wet blanket, suffocating me. How could he ask me to leave my family behind? He knew how much they meant to me. What was behind this drastic request?
    “Thomas, is everythi ng okay?”
    “It’s fine,” he snapped, shaking his head, in that way a person says it’s fine, but everything in his tone and body language says otherwise.
    I scolded myself. What was wrong with me? I had practically warped into a deep depression because I couldn’t have him , and now here he was asking me to run away with him, and I was seriously thinking maybe I shouldn’t do it.
    “I’ll go , Thomas.” I smiled.
    He looked at me, a wide grin spread across his face that told me I had just made his day.
    “Thank you.” He grabbed me and hugged me tightly. “You won’t regret it. Start packing.”
    “What? I thought we wouldn’t leave until the summer ended. I have graduation in three weeks.”
    “No, we leave in the next day or two.”
    “Why so soon?” I stammered. I couldn’t just bail before graduation. At the end of my life, my list of accomplishments would be short, but damn it, a high school diploma would be one of them.
    “I’ ve caught wind of an opportunity and need to seize it. I have to go, but I’ll see you tomorrow.” He kissed me. “Let’s keep this between us, okay.”
    “What opportunity?”
    “I stumbled upon a rare antique.”
    “Oh, your business?”
    “Just pack and be ready when I call.”
    “But Thomas …” I pleaded.
    “Start packing , Aldo, and don’t tell anyone.” He grabbed me and kissed me hard. “Okay?”
    “Okay, ” I agreed blown away by his kiss, unlike any he had given me the entire night.
    I would not tell a soul. If Lucy caught wind of it she’d probably gag and bound me, pack us up, and high tail us out of town. I kissed him once more and admired his shirtless body as he walked away, then disappeared. I realized it was the first time I had seen him without a shirt on. My inner self proceeded to do a series of back flips. I was no longer the girl who wished she could follow that tribal tattoo on his arm all the way up to see where it ended. Tonight he exposed everything. I turned to clear my mind, to sleep deep, when it occurred to me. I didn’t see his tribal tattoo.

 
    .
     
     
     
    nine
     
     
    Present
     
     
    I wake at five-thirty in Alina’s living room, realizing she must have gone to bed. The room is dark, with the exception of a dim light coming from the range above the stove in her kitchen. I get up quietly in desperate need of a bathroom. I find a half bath at the end of the hall on the back side of the living room and pee in the dark, so I won’t wake her children.
    I exit the bathroom and jump.
    Alina’s daughter, Ella, stands at her bedroom door.
    “Ella?” I whisper , approaching her slowly so I won’t frighten her.
    She nods, her tiny head wrapped in a scarf to hide her hairless scalp.
    “Y ou are even prettier than your mother told me.” I kneel in front of her. “My name is Aldo.”
    “ Mommy told me about you,” she whispers. “She said you were very pretty.”
    “Y our Mommy is so sweet. She’s the pretty one and you look just like her.”
    Ella turns and gestures for me to follow her, and I do, quietly. She leads me into her bedroom, which is exactly what every little girl’s room should look like. Stuffed animals line the shelves on her wall,