Chapter 29: ALL OUR BOYS

Brilliant sunshine streamed in through the window. I hadn't bothered to close the shutters when I went to bed. When the house phone rang, my aunt clomped her way downstairs to answer. There was a phone in my parents' bedroom and in Kayden's. I wasn't sure why she'd gone all the way downstairs to answer.

Slipping out from between the sheets, I padded through to my bathroom. I felt like a mess, and what I saw staring back at me was basically how I felt - disastrous. Staring blankly at the mirror, there was no other thought in my head, except for one that kept circling in my brain like a needle stuck in the same groove: How do I live without them?

"Can you come and speak with your father, Valerie?" Auntie Joan called up to me.

Spinning away from the mirror, I hurriedly ran to my parents' room and lifted the receiver of the phone.