“Oh my God, Pam?”
The curtain opened and a tall, thin man, with dark hair and a scar over his eye, stepped out. He had a gun, and it was pointed straight at her head.
In her last remaining second, Edna spotted, just inside the room beyond the curtain, an elderly Chinese man, seated at a desk, his forehead resting on it, a rivulet of blood draining from his temple.
The last thing Edna heard was a woman-not Pam, because Pam was done talking-saying, “We have to get out of here.”
The last thing Edna thought was, Home. I want to go home.
ONE
If I’d known this was our last morning, I’d have rolled over in bed and held her. But of course, if it had been possible to know something like that-if I could have somehow seen into the future-I wouldn’t have let go. And then things would have been different.
I’d been staring at the ceiling for a while when I finally threw back the covers and planted my feet on the hardwood floor.
“How’d you sleep?” Sheila asked as I rubbed my eyes. She reached out and touched my back.
“Not so good. You?”
“Off and on.”
“I sensed you were awake, but I didn’t want to bug you, on the off chance you were sleeping,” I said, glancing over my shoulder. The sun’s first rays of the day filtered through the drapes and played across my wife’s face as she lay in bed, looking at me. This wasn’t a time of day when people looked their best, but there was something about Sheila. She was always beautiful. Even when she looked worried, which was how she looked now.
I turned back around, looked down at my bare feet. “I couldn’t get to sleep for the longest time, then I think I finally nodded off around two, but then I looked at the clock and it was five. Been awake since then.”
“Glen, it’s going to be okay,” Sheila said. She moved her hand across my back, soothing me.