Chapter 145

• A broken-hearted, lonely girl, who lost someone she loved, was left to fend alone in a home she no longer recognized and still harbors a world of agony deep inside. As much as I look back and feel like she once deserved my anger, I don’t think she does anymore.
• Carmen’s adrift, with no anchor. Her home is gone, her mate went to another, her father’s a betrayer of all she knew, and her mother…. slowly slipping away from her as the days pass. Only devastation and fear are hiding behind cold bitch, and I wonder what she has gone through in the last few months under Juan’s rule to lose the last ounces of soft she used to allow herself to show at times. I wonder what else our people out there are going through right now too, while here we live in a bubble of general safety and happiness.
• “The past has passed. Let’s focus on the now and the future and making your mom well.” I utter quietly but with determination. I need to offer her some hope now that I can feel her mood has returned to distant and closed off. It’s like there’s no light in this girl at all, and she has become so accustomed to dwelling in the dark that her very warmth has ebbed into nothingness the second she reels it back to her damp cave with her.