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Once An Eve Novel

Once An Eve Novel

Titel: Once An Eve Novel Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Anna Carey
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picture of him, many years before, his face not yet touched by time. He looked happy, handsome even, with his arm around a young woman, her dark bangs falling in her eyes. He was gazing down at her as she stared into the camera, unsmiling. Her face held the confident expression of a woman who knows she is beautiful.
    I held the picture to my chest. It was her. I remembered every line of my mother’s face, the slight dimple in her chin, the way her black hair fell onto her forehead. She was always scrambling for a pin to hold it back. We had played dress up that day in my room, before the plague came. I could still hear the children outside, shouting and laughing, the sound of skateboards on the pavement. I wore my shoes with the pink bows. She took my other elephant barrette and put it in her hair, right above her ear. Look, my sweet girl , she said, kissing my hand, now we are twins .
    “I met her two years before you were born,” the King began. He led me to the table, pulling out a chair for me. I obliged, thankful when my body sunk into the cushion, my legs still shaking. “I was already the Governor then, and was doing a fund-raising event at the museum where she worked. She was a curator before it happened,” he said. “But I’m sure you know that.”
    “I hardly know anything about her,” I managed, staring at her eyes in the photo.
    He stood behind me, his hands resting on the back of the chair, looking over my shoulder. “She was giving me a private tour of the gardens, pointing out these plants that smelled like garlic and kept the deer away.” He sat down beside me, raking his fingers through his hair. “And there was something in the way she spoke that struck me, as if she were always laughing at some joke only she understood. I stayed two weeks there, and then we kept in touch after. I would come to see her whenever I wasn’t in Sacramento. But eventually the distance was too much for us. We lost touch.
    “Two years later, the plague came. It was gradual at first. There were news reports of the disease in China, in parts of Europe. For a long time we thought it had been contained abroad. American doctors were coming up with a vaccine. Then it mutated. The virus was stronger; it killed faster. It reached the States and people began dying by the thousands. The vaccine was rushed onto the market, but it only slowed the disease’s progress, drew out the suffering for months. Your mother was trying to reach me but I had no idea. She sent emails and letters, called before the phones went out. It wasn’t until I was quarantined that I discovered the correspondence in my office. A whole stack of letters was piled on my desk, unopened.”
    I remembered that time. The bleeds had gotten worse. She went through handkerchief after handkerchief, trying to keep her nose dry. She’d finally gone to sleep one afternoon, her bedroom dark as I wandered out. The house across the street was marked with a red X . The lawn beside it was dug up, the dirt turned over where they’d buried the first bodies. The quiet scared me. All the children were gone. A broken bicycle sat in the middle of the road. The neighbor’s cat was outside, lapping at the end of a hose, as I approached the door. I’d walked in, looking for the couple I’d seen coming and going so many times before, the man with the brown hat. I remembered the smell, thick and foul, and the dust that had accumulated in the corners. We need help , I’d said, as I took a few tentative steps into the living room. Then I saw his remains on the couch. His skin was gray, his face partially sunken in from decay.
    “You left us,” I said, unable to hide the anger in my voice. “She was alone, she died alone in that house, and you could have helped her. I was waiting for someone to save us.”
    He covered my hand with his own, but I pulled away. “I would’ve, Genevieve—”
    “That’s not my name,” I snapped. I clutched the picture to my chest. “You can’t just call me that.”
    He stood and walked to the window, his back to me. Outside, the land beyond the wall was black, not one light visible for miles. “I didn’t even know you existed until I read her letters.” He sighed. “How could you be angry with me for that? They had to put soldiers at my door to prevent people from attacking me. I was one of the few government officials in Sacramento who survived. The people were convinced I had some magical cure, that I could save their

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