With His Dying Breath Read Online Free Page B

killers had kidnapped the two kids. Then later, they accused her of playing a part in this horrible act.
    Her aunt adopted her and became a mother in every sense of the word. Aunt Pat attended therapy sessions with her and spent time teaching her what a young woman should know especially how to give and receive love. Aunt Pat truly loved her and helped her through some very shameful and awkward years.
    Eventually, she and her therapist helped Sammi join high school society where she was an outgoing young teenager. But that all changed just after her sixteenth birthday.
    On a first date in the spring of her tenth grade year, a boy took advantage of her. She became very withdrawn swearing to never mention the incident to anyone especially her aunt. Stress had aborted the pregnancy in the seventh week of her first trimester. She did not dare tell a teacher or go to a doctor.
    Many years later during an OBGYN physical, she learned she had not miscarried. A combination of stress and improper diet had wreaked havoc on the teenager’s female cycle and her young mind into thinking she was carrying a rapist’s child. What a horrible time.
    Sammi entered eleventh grade and poured herself into her studies maintaining a 3.98 high school average which earned her several cash scholarships to the college of her choice following graduation. She had been voted Homecoming Queen her junior year, Senior Prom Queen and Senior Superlative for Most Likely to Succeed. Lot of good it does me now.
    Her thoughts returned to Blake. At six two, with a little gray around the temples, they were a good-looking couple. He was so good-looking and smart with a post-graduate degree in Economics from Harvard. He was naturally fit, but walked with a slight limp from an automobile accident and the weighted burden of guilt.
    He told her about the accident on their second date. As a commercial real estate broker and developer, he was often on the cell phone. He just did not see the car two in front of him stop suddenly. This created a chain reaction and he was sandwiched in between other vehicles. Hospitalized for several months and physical therapy for two years helped everything but the limp. But Jess was hurt the worst. “Of course, I learned that from someone else,” Sammi said.
    The woman in the adjacent cell said, “What? What you talking about?”
    “Oh, I’m sorry. My thoughts just got away from me.”
    “Well, keep them to yourself. I got my own thinking to do!”
    Sammi moved as far to the other side as possible. Her thoughts returned to her life with Blake. Sammi and Blake had been happy for the first two and a half years of marriage until just about the time the Jonses moved in across the street. They thought Blake had steered them into offering too much money for the house. That seemed to be when Blake changed. He became withdrawn. He was different, not physically abusive, just not attentive to her desires. Another rejection. His actions affected her feelings toward him, and she began to doubt if she loved him. There were times she would get so mad about something he did or, usually, didn’t do, she couldn’t be in the same room with him.
    For almost six months now, he had day by day gotten more and more recluse with his time and his money. At night, he would fall asleep on the sofa. Why didn’t you want to sleep with me anymore? During the night, she might find him up reading some new magazine subscription. When they did talk, he fired questions at her. I don’t like having questions fired at me.
    She longed for their rel ationship to return to its budding days. Once, about a month after their honeymoon, he asked her who her favorite all time singer was. Without hesitation, she said, Tony Bennett. Two weeks later, she sat in a private concert where Tony sang just to her. It was the thrill of a lifetime. She never asked how he arranged it or who he knew to set it up, but she expressed her thanks in a very loving and intimate way.
    He was easy