Read Through Glass: Episode Four for Free Online Page B

the anger boiled out of me. What little control I had
over it, evaporating. “Like stray dogs and 1920s segregation! The
way Abran spoke of it… and the fact that they were all ready to
kill me over it, didn’t help much…”
    My anger began to seep away as I
continued talking, the bruises that covered my body throbbing in a
dull reminder of just how real their opinions of me were, and how
much Travis had risked to get me out of there. If anything, that
one thought took away the last of my emotion, and I sat heaving in
the silence as I looked at my brother, his own face relaxing as he
seemed to realize the extent of what I was saying.
    “ I’m sorry I couldn’t get
you out before they did that.” His voice was soft, the apology so
heartfelt that my heart tightened painfully, my face burning at the
memory, at the pain that I heard echoed back to me.
    “ It doesn’t matter,” I
replied, even though it did. “Would they have done that to Cohen?”
I resented asking the question the moment it was out of me, my
heart speeding up in a pitter-patter that echoed in my ears like a
thousand running feet.
    Everything hurt as I looked at my
brother, waiting for him to answer, needing him to. Only to have a
soft chime echo through the silence. It almost sounded like the
wind chimes that our mom would hang every spring, the ones that had
the painted lilac blossoms on them. The ones that matched the
beautiful bush that used to grow outside my window.
    A shiver that bordered on pleasure and
fear wound its way up my spine, my joints tensing painfully as if
it was just another warning, another call to signal the arrival of
the beasts that would attempt to devour us.
    I watched as Travis’s shoulders tensed
in time with mine, his body straightening from the relaxed position
as he sat up, pulling from his pocket a cell phone that was glowing
with a dull yellow light. His broad shoulders were tense as he
stared at the phone, watching it ring, his breathing slow as he
tried to control his fear. Whereas mine only seemed to
grow.
    “ Is it Bridget?” I asked,
knowing full well what the other side to that question was, and
that there was only one other person it could be.
    Travis knew, too. His eyes darted up
from the still ringing cell phone to meet mine, eyes wide in fear
before his thumb compressed the button, the light changing as the
call connected and Travis switched it to speakerphone.
    “ Tee,” he said simply, the
stress in his voice making the vowels grumble.
    My muscles shook as I tensed, waiting
for a response. The phone rattled with the static before a voice
came through, the broken connection making it hard to
understand.
    “ Tee...? Hon…? Are you…?”
The static took over after she was only able to get just a few
words out, but it didn’t matter. My body relaxed, the fearful
stress that had taken over unwinding into the stiff tension that
had become so normal it was almost welcomed.
    Travis’s reaction was much more
emotional, however. The phone stayed still in his lap as his head
lowered into his hands, his fingers digging into his hair as he
began to shake. At first I had thought he was angry, and I had
feared an outburst that I had never seen, but then his voice broke
as he tried to talk through the static, as he tried to respond to
Bridget’s desperate attempt at connection.
    “ Bridge, baby. Oh, baby.”
His voice cracked as he broke down, the tension in his knuckles
loosening as relief that I hadn’t known he’d feared would never
come flowed out of him.
    The tension in his shoulders slowly
left as the static continued, his body calmer as he clung to the
phone, holding it close to him as if it was a child, desperate to
hear anything from her.
    I just sat and watched him cry in joy
as the static mingled with the crackling of the fire. I didn’t know
if I should leave or if I should hug him. I didn’t know what to do
because I had never seen him, or any man, react this way. In many
ways, I felt like an