Breaker's Passion Read Online Free

I told you I’m fine and I’m safe.” She steeled herself for what was to come.
    “Colby, how can you continue to do this to me and your sisters?” Her mother sounded better than last month. Then she’d been suffering from a bad case of laryngitis and Colby could barely hear what she was saying. Unfortunately this conversation was crystal clear.
    “Mom, please, we’ve had this discussion. A dozen times, in fact. I know you love me and I love all of you, but you and my sisters would be here in twenty-four hours if you knew where I was. I’m perfectly fine and healthy, and I’m sorry, I do love you. I love everyone. I just don’t want you here.” Colby repeated that same statement to her mother every time she called, which was always on the first day of the month.
    She had nothing against her family. She loved them, but she refused to return to a cheerful existence as if nothing had happened. They would try to engage her in life again, encourage her to return to work. She was just not interested. She didn’t have the energy to subject herself to the barrage of questions that her mother and five very nosy siblings would ask.
    Her mother and her sisters couldn’t believe she would simply throw her career away. But Colby didn’t care what they thought. It was her face she needed to look at in the mirror every morning. She was culpable in a very ugly part of her life and had no desire to return.
    “Colby, please, you’re my daughter,” Jeanette said in a quiet tone, as if that was the perfect reason Colby should dredge all the ugliness of her character to the surface.
    Since the death of her father when she was twenty-two, she had maintained a very close relationship with her mother. She missed her. She missed her more than anything. On more than one occasion she had almost called her mother and told her everything about what happened that fateful night. What happened to that child. What happened to Gretchen.
    But every time she picked up the phone and started to dial, Colby realized this was her cross to bear, no one else’s. Her mother would feel her pain, her agony, and she would hurt for her daughter. Colby didn’t want anyone else to experience the slightest pain over that night. It was difficult for her mother not to know where she was or what she was doing. Before she left, Colby had given her best friend and her attorney her cell-phone number. She swore them both to secrecy, to not give the information to anyone unless in an extreme emergency. Both had understood what that meant and so far, after three years, had kept their promise.
    “It’s just that I worry about you, Colby, you’re my daughter,” Jeanette repeated.
    “Mom, please, I’m not having this conversation with you. Now, how is everybody?” She took this approach call after call, month after month. Her mother knew she could be very hardheaded once she set her mind to something and had learned not to push.
    “Cindy is about to be a partner, Teresa has more clients than she has room for, and Samantha just hit the million-dollars-in-sales club. Christine still has that same old job at Walmart, and Lindsay is enjoying her summer vacation.”
    As her mother spoke, the faces of her five sisters flashed across her closed eyes. The lawyer, the stockbroker, the real-estate agent, the store manager, and the teacher. All six of the Taylor women were successful, accomplished, professional women. Four of them were married to their original husbands, and her baby sister Teresa had not yet found Mr. Right. Colby, well, she was where she was.
    The conversation with her mother lasted another ten or fifteen minutes. Her mother did most of the talking, and more often lately it sparked a wave of loneliness, even after three years. Colby was still angry at herself that her thoughtless words and actions had put her here. Her absence was hurting the ones she loved, but she deserved this punishment.
    Colby lost track of time like she always did when she was