Pandora's Key by Nancy Richardson Fischer Read Free Book Online Page A

someone she was never going to be? The painting felt like a big joke at Evangeline’s expense and she ached with humiliation.
    Evangeline plucked up a small card resting at the base of the painting and opened it:
To my daughter, Evangeline, who has made my life full of colors I never imagined. I love you, mom.
Instantly she felt ashamed.
I should be thankful that she loves me enough to paint me at all.
    Evangeline raced up the stairs two at a time. “Mom!” she called. “Where are you?” She walked through the upstairs hall, the walls lined with black and white baby photos: Evangeline on a pony; on her mother’s shoulders; in Samantha’s embrace; at her third birthday; swimming in a pool. “About the painting—I hope you’re not planning to hang that monstrosity in a gallery,” Evangeline said aloud, trying to keep her tone playful even though she didn’t feel all that light and lovely. “If people see your version of me, they’ll think you need glasses. Serious, coke-bottle glasses. Mom?”
    No answer.
    She looked in her bedroom. No mom, just twin beds with green comforters, an antique roll-top desk they’d found at a garage sale, and posters of faraway locales like Bali, Greece and Africa—all places Evangeline hoped to visit when she finally blew out of the fleece-loving, Keene-wearing Pacific Northwest.
    She checked the bathroom, hoping she wouldn’t find her mom freaking out again. Her mom’s weird waking nightmares were really starting to worry her. If it kept happening, she would definitely press her mom into seeing a doctor, which would be kinda hard, since neither of them even had one.
    “Where are you?” Evangeline called, opening her mother’s bedroom door. She stepped inside and her stomach twisted violently. The mirror had been shattered and bloody glass shards were jumbled on top of the bureau. One white sneaker was poking out from the far side of the bed. She looked away, not wanting to see her mother’s thin ankle. But it was too late. Evangeline slowly walked around the side of the bed, heart pounding in her ears, mouth suddenly bone-dry.
    “Mom?”
    Her mother lay on her stomach. Her right hand was cut along the knuckles and covered in blood.
Did she punch the mirror?
Evangeline knelt down and brushed the hair off her mother’s face, fingers resting on the soft skin of her neck. She had a pulse. She wasn’t dead.
    “Mom?”
    Evangeline shook her mother’s shoulder. And shook it again, harder. Her mom didn’t stir or open her eyes. Evangeline pulled out her cell phone and dialed 9-1-1, gave the operator their address, and told him that her mom was unconscious.
    “Is she breathing?”
    “Yes, but she won’t wake up!” Evangeline’s voice sounded like a little kid’s. She went back to her mom’s side and took her left hand. “Please hurry,” she said into the phone.
    “Hang in there. You’ll hear the ambulance really soon,” the operator promised.
    Evangeline strained to hear the sirens. But when she finally did, she didn’t feel any relief because her mom looked so tiny and broken and she didn’t understand how this had happened. It should not have happened! Her mom was really young and healthy. She was also the only family Evangeline had, so she needed to wake up.
    “Oh god, please wake up. Mom, can you hear me? Mom? Please—please—please wake up!”
    The paramedics put Olivia on a gurney. One of them put an IV line into her hand and hung a bag of clear liquid from a pole at the top of the gurney. “Does your mom do any drugs?”
    “What? No! No way!”
    “Has she been sick? Cold? Flu? High blood pressure, cancer, kidney, lung or heart problems?”
    “No, no, none of that! My mom’s super healthy! She’s going to be okay. She has to be—she will be! Right? Right?”
    The paramedic didn’t answer and they rode in the ambulance in silence.

Chapter Seven

    Malledy lay on a couch in the townhouse trying to nap. He’d left early that morning and spent the