Kelly Hill Read Online Free Page A

of the process brought a sense of calm to her.
    If there was one thing that always made her feel better, it was sewing. Sewing was easy. Sewing made sense.
    Rachel was still in the clothes from the day before and she hadn’t bothered to try and wash any of the make-up off of her face, but it didn’t matter.
    She just needed some time to sit down and think by herself.
    Time.
    That’s what Rachel felt like she was lacking.
    When everything was said and done at the end of every day she would mentally go over in her head every moment that she had managed to waste.
    For some reason, that day she had felt like she hadn’t deserved rest and her brain demanded that she get caught up. That she make up for the time lost.
    Now, it was seven in the morning and she knew that a new day was starting.
    Just another day gone without any sleep.
    That was alright though; she had finished her skirt, folded the laundry, got even more ahead in several of her online college prep classes and had even managed to start baking a quiche for breakfast.
    Even if it hadn’t been a very productive day, she had made it an extremely productive night.
    Anything to keep the unwanted thoughts at bay. Anything to stop her brain from reminding her that Kelly Hill was downstairs, sleeping in her basement. After everything she had done, he was still there.
    Rachel held up the skirt for her inspection, perfectly aware of how far away the seam rippers were if she wasn’t completely satisfied with her work.
    Luckily she found it more than adequate and so, with a satisfied sigh, she folded the finished skirt and laid it gently across her sewing table, contemplating what she could do next.
    As her eyes scanned her room they caught sight of the dark mark on her nightstand. The letter that she wasn’t ready to read. She sat there in silence, looking at the unassuming paper envelope, wondering just what he could possibly have wanted to say to her after all this time.
    Her alarm brought Rachel away from her thoughts of Jefferson at exactly seven fifteen and her left hand lightly tapped the “off” button. Trying to move away from the melancholy thoughts that had drummed up she turned back to the skirt she had just finished. It was perfect. It was complete. One more task finished. Something she could understand.
    Rachel used to keep the alarm clock on her night stand, right next to her pillow, but soon she realized that it was incredibly simple to just keep it on her sewing table, seeing as that’s where she wound up most mornings.
    Rachel stretched and felt refreshed. Accomplished even. A feeling that she rarely had since leaving Phillips. Almost at least, not totally, but enough.
    Not long ago, Phillips Academy had been her home.
    And not just the place that she stayed because she paid tuition to stay in the dorms, but her true blue, love being there, home.
    A place she felt like she could rest her head and everything would be alright.
    She had friends. She had a boyfriend. And she was able to study as much as she wanted to.
    Rachel’s favorite thing to do was fill up her course load and still manage to have a semblance of a social life.
    She was living her dream out in style and praying to get into the college of her dreams.
    Not that she had decided which dream that was yet. There was several that she could follow. Different avenues that were just as bright as all the others. And there were no doors closed to her.
    But Rachel didn’t feel like she was done learning yet, done discovering. She always hoped that she could find something that could keep her as busy as Phillips did, but in the back of her mind, she knew that nothing ever would.
    Phillips was a wondrous place for her and when she had to leave it had been the worst thing that she could ever imagine.
    But Rachel would never let that show. Because letting it show meant that her father would contest the board’s ruling. And that meant talking about everything that she just wasn’t quite ready to talk