With Her Last Breath Read Online Free Page A

alone then,” Rosa Alessandro had said, as she’d filled the ravioli dough with a spinach mixture. “No husband coming later, a boyfriend perhaps?”
    “I’m divorced,” Maggie had answered a little too sharply. Ryan’s betrayal, his desertion when she needed him most, still stung. She hadn’t meant for that pain to leap out unexpectedly— he hadn’t believed she’d been attacked; Ryan, her husband, didn’t want to endanger his business to support her…
    After a long, torturous road of pain and decision, she blamed herself, not Ryan. Her choices were as she made them—but she would never regret fighting for Glenda, risking everything.
    “You’ll be comfortable here,” Rosa had said, one woman sensing another’s pain. She wiped her hands on her apron. “Are you needing protection?” she had asked cautiously.
    “I’m trying to start a new life by myself,” Maggie had said quietly.
    At that, Rosa had hugged her again, adding a kiss on her cheek that surprised Maggie. The soft gush of motherly Italian words stunned her. It had been years since she’d been comforted, and she truly appreciated the gift. “Thank you. Whatever you said, you have no idea how much it means to me.”
    Rosa smiled warmly. “Poor little bird, you have come to the right place. This will be your new home.”
    The building had a comfortable, worn feeling, as though lives had passed happily there, and without even looking at the apartment, Maggie had taken it at the affordable price. Mr. and Mrs. Alessandro had merely given her directions upstairs from the restaurant’s kitchen. They’d told her to bring the plate, fork, and spaghetti spoon down to the kitchen later, and that meals—whatever was the daily special—came with the room. If she got hungry between times, she was to use the family’s private, roomy kitchen, dishing up the leftovers from the refrigerator; cleaning up the kitchen’s range was a must. Rosa spoke like a woman who had run a family, giving Maggie no more, no less firm instructions than she would give her sons.
    While the large family kitchen behind the commercial one looked comfortable, with the muted sounds of the restaurant on the other side, Maggie preferred to eat alone.
    The Alessandros’ upstairs apartment was across from hers, and that gave Maggie an odd sense of safety and homecoming.
    Safety fled when Maggie noted the ancient door lock and the skeleton key. Experience told her that a chair backed into the knob and a rubber wedge beneath the door would offer some comfort, but a child could open the lock.
    Her sister’s seducer had come straight into Maggie’s bathroom at home and had found Maggie soaking in mounds of scented bubbles. Furious that she’d gone to his powerful social friends, exposing the dark side of his life, using her sister, he’d wanted to prove his power over her by rape—
    And after eight more months of Maggie struggling to save her marriage, Glenda was dead of an overdose. Maggie had tried everything to pull her back from the edge, and nothing had helped.
    With experience, Maggie pushed back the memories that could still slither into life. She hefted the backpack filledwith Scout’s dry dog food and bowls onto a chair. “How do you like our new home?”
    The small, neat, one-room apartment overlooked the picturesque Main Street. An air conditioner filled one tall window, and an aged radiator had been painted several times. The sturdy bed didn’t match the big dresser, but when Maggie tested the mattress, it was firm and good. She flipped back the worn chenille bedspread and cotton sheets and found the scent of sunshine.
    Scout padded after her into the compact bathroom. “Good. A shower and no bath,” Maggie noted.
    She would never take a bath again, never let herself be so defenseless…
    Maggie firmly closed the bathroom door and shut out thoughts of her past. She was going to look to the future. She was going to change her life here in Blanchefleur, meet her fear