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horns blaring. He drops the phone, grabs the wheel
with both hands, and swerves. It’s too late.
    •
    The autumn air is crisp and cool against her skin. Clouds
gather overhead, casting a dreary shadow over a dreary scene. The breeze toys
with stray strands of her hair. Her eyes are red. Her cheeks are blotchy. Over
the past year, it seems she has cried enough to last a lifetime. All around her
are headstones and concrete angels—memorials to people she will never know. In
the middle of it all is a stone for Patrick beside the plot where his parents
lay.
    It was not supposed to be this way. Their story was never
supposed to end like this! She cannot imagine life without Patrick, even now
when she is faced with the reality that she will have to find a way to soldier
on. She never in her darkest nightmares thought she would have to do this
alone. There will be no time for school now. She will have to disenroll.
    Her mind strays to their many conversations at their rickety
old dining table.
    “You promised to be here with me. You said we could do this
together,” she whispers tearfully. “You promised .”
    Cleopatra stands before the grave with a bundle in her arms.
Her newborn sleeps soundly, swaddled in a fluffy pink blanket. But there is no
color in Cleopatra’s world any more, robbed of her saving grace and driving
force. The light is gone from her as surely as it is gone from the future:
extinguished, snuffed out. She glances down into baby Chloe’s face.
    Cleopatra knows now, or at least her heart is convinced,
that Patrick was the father. She can see Patrick in her. In her blond hair and
her rosy cheeks. He was always the father. There was never any need to fret, never
any cause to worry. Chloe opens her eyes as much as she can in her fragile
first days, staring up into Cleopatra’s face with a puckered expression. Tears
stream down Cleo’s cheeks.
    Utterly heartbroken, she adjusts her baby so she can see the
grave. “Chloe, meet your father.” She inhales. The air stings. “Patrick
Taylor,” she chokes. Cleopatra holds her baby close. She turns and walks away
from the grave.

Chapter 4
    Twenty three years later…
    A single two door car sits in the supermarket parking lot. The
engine is off, but the keys are still in the ignition. James Jones waits behind
the wheel, drumming his hands to the tune of the song on the radio. He is 26
with styled black hair and wintry blue eyes.
    Bruce, the nightshift security guard, finally opens the
side-door. Chloe hurries out into the night, slinging her handbag over her
shoulder. Her long blonde hair is tied back in a ponytail at the base of her
neck. Her frame is slender, but well proportioned. She wears heavy black makeup
around her lurid green eyes and a spiked choker around her neck. She also wears
dark lipstick in a color she fondly refers to as Black Cherry.
    Bruce watches vigilantly, not unlike some sort of guardian
angel, as she crosses the asphalt lot and gets into the car. Only then does he
retreat into the store, letting the door close behind him.
    James looks across the consul at Chloe, wearing his winning
smile. The expression is not returned. Then again, Chloe is not the type to go
around grinning like a drunken idiot twenty four seven either. But he is.
“Really hate this job,” she mumbles, slouching back into the passenger seat,
picking at the black polish on her fingernails.
    James’ dark eyebrows jump up. He is quite the animated
individual. She often wonders why he did not go into acting. “The job or the
people?” he presses.
    Chloe’s eyebrows jump up too, but sarcastically. “Both.” She
fishes her phone from the pocket of her hoodie, the stretchy cuffs of the
sleeves cut with holes for her thumbs.
    James shakes his finger, ever the optimistic. “I still think
I could teach you to draw plans.”
    Chloe rolls her head towards him. She regards him
sarcastically, exuding more confidence than she usually feels. “So I can steal
all your