I fell back in the bed. "Really? How bad is it?"
"Don't know yet. They’ve taken skin from her leg to cover it."
"Oh, that sounds bad. Guess Botox and facelifts won't help her this time."
"No. But, at least she has a guy who loves her. Your dad has been so nice to her while she’s been in the hospital. He sent her a hundred red roses today. And balloons. Her room is filled with balloons."
I chuckled lightly. It hurt my wound. "I hope he won't get his heart crushed again," I said.
"He's a good man, your dad."
"So are you," I said.
"I still owe you a dinner," he said and kissed me. "By the way, I thought of something while waiting for you to wake up. I don't know if it’s the solution, but maybe it could help."
"What's that?"
"With Victor. I know you've been thinking a lot about how to help him and keep him in school. Well, I thought maybe Ole could help him? I mean he doesn't work for the city anymore, so he can do whatever he wants. He's been wanting to get back to work with kids again, so maybe it’s an idea?"
"That's a great idea," I said. "I'll call him right away."
"Better wait till you're well," Morten said and kissed me again. "By the way, there is someone here to see you."
"Who's that?"
Morten left and, soon after, a voice filled the room.
"Mom?"
Maya stuck her face inside.
"Maya, dear. I'm so happy to see you. How are you?"
She stopped by the end of the bed. Her eyes avoided mine.
"It's okay, Maya. You're entitled to be angry."
She nodded, while still looking down. "I'm glad you're better."
"Me too. Hopefully, I'll be home soon. Has grandpa taken good care of you?"
Maya nodded. "Listen, Mom. There’s something I want to tell you."
"Sure. Anything, sweetheart."
Finally, she looked up and our eyes met. I smiled. I missed her.
"I want to go live with Dad."
She didn't wait for my answer. As soon as she’d finished the sentence, she turned around and left.
THE END
DEAR READER,
Thank you for purchasing PEEK-A-BOO, I See You. This is the fifth book in my Emma Frost-series, but don't worry. This is not the last you will hear of Emma Frost and her family. I promise you that much.
But, until I have written the next book, you can always enjoy some of my other previously published books. Just follow the links below to check them all out. I’ve also included an excerpt of my novel xxxx that you can read on the following pages, if you like.
Thanks for reading. Don't forget to leave reviews.
Take care,
Willow
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BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
MYSTERY/HORROR NOVELS:
ONE, TWO ... HE IS COMING FOR YOU (Rebekka Frank #1) - http://www.amazon.com/One, two ...
THREE, FOUR ... BETTER LOCK YOUR DOOR (Rebekka Frank #2) - http://www.amazon.com/Three, Four ...
FIVE, SIX ... GRAB YOUR CRUCIFIX (Rebekka Frank #3) - http://www.amazon.com/Five, Six ...
SEVEN, EIGHT ... GONNA STAY UP LATE (Rebekka Frank #4) - http://www.amazon.com/Seven, eight ...
NINE, TEN ... NEVER SLEEP AGAIN (Rebekka Frank #5) - http://www.amazon.com/Nine, ten ...
EDWINA - http://www.amazon.com/Edwina
ITSY BITSY SPIDER (Emma Frost #1) - http://www.amazon.com/Itsy Bitsy Spider
MISS DOLLY HAD A DOLLY (Emma Frost #2)- http://www.amazon.com/Miss Polly
RUN RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN (Emma Frost #3) - http://www.amazon.com/Run run
CROSS YOUR HEART AND HOPE TO DIE (Emma Frost #4) - http://www.amazon.com/Cross your heart
PEEK A BOO I SEE YOU (Emma Frost #5) - coming out Martz 2014
HORROR SHORT STORIES:
EENIE, MEENIE - http://www.amazon.com/Eenie, Meenie
ROCK-A-BYE BABY- http://www.amazon.com/Rock-a-bye
NIBBLE, NIBBLE, CRUNCH - http://www.amazon.com/Nibble, Crunch
HUMPTY, DUMPTY - http://www.amazon.com/Humpty, Dumpty
CHAIN LETTER - http://www.amazon.com/Chain Letter
PARANORMAL ROMANCE/SUSPENSE/FANTASY NOVELS:
BEYOND (AFTERLIFE #1) - http://www.amazon.com/Beyond
SERENITY (AFTERLIFE #2) - http://www.amazon.com/Serenity
ENDURANCE (AFTERLIFE #3) - http://www.amazon.com/Endurance
COURAGEOUS (AFTERLIFE #4) - http://www.amazon.com/Courageous
SAVAGE (Daughters of the Jaguar #1) - http://www.amazon.com/Savage
BROKEN (Daughters of the Jaguar #2) - http://www.amazon.com/Broken
A GYPSY SONG (The Wolfboy Chronicles) - http://www.amazon.com/A Gypsy song
I AM WOLF (The Wolfboy Chronicles) - http://www.amazon.com/I am WOLF
BOX SETS:
REBEKKA FRANCK SERIES - http://www.amazon.com/Rebekka Franck
DAUGHTERS OF THE JAGUAR - http://www.amazon.com/Daughtersof the Jaguar
THE AFTERLIFE SERIES - http://www.amazon.com/Afterlife
HORROR STORIES FROM DENMARK - http://www.amazon.com/Horror Stories
THE WOLFBOY CHRONICLES - http://www.amazon.com/THE WOLFBOY CHRONICLES
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
WILLOW ROSE is an international Best-selling author.
She writes Mystery/Suspense/Horror, Paranormal Romance and fantasy. Originally from Denmark she now lives on Florida's Space Coast with her husband and two daughters. She is a huge fan of Stephen King, Anne Rice and Isabel Allende. When she is not writing or reading she enjoys watching the dolphins play in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Her books have been downloaded in more than 550.000 copies.
Connect with Willow online:
http://www.willow-rose.blogspot.com/
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https://twitter.com/madamwillowrose
The following is an excerpt from Willow Rose's Bestselling Horror Novel EDWINA.
EDWINA
CHAPTER 1
"ARE YOU SURE you want to do this?" The social worker, Line Petersen who was handling the girl's case said. "I mean we're thrilled that you want to take Edwina in, don't get me wrong, but Edwina is ... a special case."
"Mother used to say that no pit is ever so deep that God can't reach into it and pull you out," Marie-Therese replied calmly even if she wasn't sure she believed in it. She was neither religious nor superstitious, even if her mother had been both.
"Well that's settled then," Line Petersen said and handed Marie-Therese the case file.
It wasn't the first time the girl came into foster-care. Every time before this had gone wrong somehow. But that didn't frighten Marie-Therese. She had heard about the girl's unfortunate story from Mrs. Hansen who owned the local grocery-store that Marie-Therese visited almost daily. The girl's mother used to work at the grocery store back when they had just arrived from Ukraine. But now the mother was dead, leukemia they said, and the father had died before they left Ukraine to move to Denmark.
Marie-Therese knew perfectly well why the girl was the way she was. She was introverted and shy because of the mother - and probably the loss of her father in an early childhood. But the mother had to have been the worst factor. To think that she had hid Edwina from the world for almost a year when they moved here from Ukraine, was something that would have made Marie-Therese furious if she wasn't such a controlled person who never let her temper (which her own mother had taught her could only come from the devil) get the best of her.
Edwina wasn't the first foster child Marie-Therese had taken in. She had two more waiting at home for her to bring back the new kid. Evil tongues claimed from time to time that she only took the kids in for the extra two thousand dollars a month per child she received, bu
t Marie-Therese didn't see it that way. She told herself that she did something good for these children, she gave them a home and a family, and since she had no man or children of her own, there was plenty of room in the old house on the street of Langholm. It was just an extra bonus that she, now with Edwina in the house, would be able to finally quit her part-time job as a nurse at the local hospital.
Marie-Therese never cared much for taking care of sick people. Her mother had told her being a nurse was a good idea, a good way to pay God back for all he had done for her. But Marie-Therese didn't feel like she owed God anything. She didn't care much about him, and didn't think he cared much about her either. It was mostly her mother who had been into all that, being religious and all. They lived together in the mother's old house until she died four years ago. Marie-Therese inherited the house and it was while sitting alone as a spinster in the old house, reading the paper about a woman who had done the same, that she had come up with the idea of taking a child into foster care, giving her a home and of course - as a bonus - at the same time providing an income for herself.
Now Marie-Therese was sitting in the social worker's office once again, waiting for Edwina to be brought out to her. She read the file a couple of times, and it was heartbreaking what happened to the family before her who had taken in Edwina. She felt mostly bad for Edwina. That poor girl. All alone in life once again. Marie-Therese was thrilled to be able to provide a new home for her.
The door opened and Line Petersen stepped out. She stopped and held the door open.
"Come on, Edwina," she said with a sigh.
A face peeked out, hiding slightly behind the doorframe. A set of eyes met Marie-Therese's.
"Well come on," Line Petersen said with another annoyed sigh. "We haven't got all day."
More of her face was shown and even if she had been warned, Marie-Therese couldn't help but gasp. The lump on the girl's forehead was substantially bigger than what Marie-Therese expected. All the veins were visible and it looked like it was pulling her face, making it lopsided.
"This is Edwina. Edwina, meet Ms. Lundtofte, she'll be taking care of you, so you be good to her, you hear me? Ms. Lundtofte is a very nice lady."
Marie-Therese felt revulsion, and was almost nauseous. She had heard the rumors about the girl and her appearance, but never really believed them. But this ... this was almost too much. The girl's glowing green eyes stared at her and made her feel uncomfortable. Marie-Therese looked into them, searched for just a hint, just anything she could care about in there.
"Hi, Edwina," she said swallowing her nausea and bending down in front of the girl. "I'm Marie-Therese."
"She doesn't talk much," Line Petersen said. "Mostly grunts. They don't know why. It's not that she can't talk, she just doesn't do it." Line Petersen leaned over and whispered. "It might be the thing in her forehead that blocks her brain somehow, the doctor says. Poor girl."
"What is it?" Marie-Therese asked staring almost paralyzed at the lump.
Line Petersen shrugged. "Some sort of tumor, as far as they know it's benign. But it's too much a part of her head to be removed; it has been there since birth so they are afraid to kill her if they remove it. It is a sort of deformity caused by the radiation she was exposed to in her mother's womb."
"At Chernobyl?"
"Yes. You read the file. They were both there when the explosion happened. The parents worked there. Edwina's mother was pregnant at the time of the explosion. It's a miracle that Edwina is still alive. I heard a rumor that the mother was in fact expecting twins and when the explosion happened the other child died and Edwina sort of absorbed it in her brain, but as I said, it's just silly rumors," Line Petersen said laughing. Then she went serious. "The fact is we've had several doctors look at her and they don't know what it is, they only know that it is somehow a part of the girl's body, it has been with her since birth and removing it might be fatal, as I explained. So I guess she is stuck with looking like this."
"But that's terrible ..."
Line Petersen shrugged. "We all have our lump to carry, don't we?"
Marie-Therese nodded while staring at the girl, who wasn't much bigger than a four-year-old, even if she was supposed to be six.
Marie-Therese knew all about burdens to carry. She had taken care of her mother all those years when she had struggled with cancer and that wasn't a pretty sight. In the end the mother had become mean as a bat, constantly yelling at her daughter, calling her awful names and throwing things at her. On the really bad days her mother couldn't even recognize her and accused her of stealing from her, of being a thief. Once she even managed to call the police to come and arrest the woman who had broken into her home and was stealing all her money.
In the end the brain tumor had made her brain into complete goo and she could hardly speak and certainly not yell, but she kept her meanness and fanatic fundamentalist religious beliefs. All she had to do was to stare at Marie-Therese in a certain way to let her know what she thought. She didn't need to speak to tell Marie-Therese that she thought she was sinning against her creator, that she needed to pray for forgiveness, do penance. Her mother would sometimes hurt herself and Marie-Therese had to strap her down to her bed. Yes, she had been some burden to carry and Marie-Therese had carried her all the way to the grave. Now it was her turn to be taken care of. If no one else would, then she would have to do it herself. With the money she received from taking in Edwina she would be able to do just that.
"Let's go home," she said to the girl with a smile.
CHAPTER 2
THOMAS BASTRUP AWOKE one morning in September not long after Edwina moved in next door, needing to go to the bathroom. It had become more and more frequent lately that he had to go in the middle of the night. He knew he had to try and fight it in order to not end up like his father who right up till he died, needed to go every fifteen minutes, even at night.
Still half asleep he walked across the bedroom while his wife, Minna turned in the bed and grunted something in her sleep. Thomas lowered his pants and urinated for what felt like forever. He flushed and left the bathroom. With one leg back in bed, he saw the girl. Thomas blinked a few times to better focus in the darkness. Right there, in the neighbor's window on the other side of the fence, there she was, staring back at him. Her glowing green eyes lit up in the darkness and her lump seemed to glow with a strange light. Till the day Thomas Bastrup died he claimed that she was laughing and that he could hear her laughter.
The laughter of death, he would often call it.
He was even certain he could feel her cold breath on his skin. It was at that moment, remembering his childhood nightmares, Thomas Bastrup let out a scream so horrific it woke up his wife with a start.
"What's going on?" she said. "What's happening? Is it something with the kids? Did something happen to the kids? Why are you screaming Thomas? Stop screaming for crying out loud!"
She pulled his t-shirt. Thomas pulled out of his trance and stopped screaming. He looked at his wife.
"Thomas you're waking up the kids, what's going on?" she asked with concerned eyes.
Thomas was breathing heavily, almost hyperventilating. He turned his head and looked again. The girl was gone. Just like his childhood monsters in the closet or under the bed that Thomas now remembered had followed him all the way through elementary school. They too were always gone once his parents came into the room, but they had been there, he knew it, he had seen them again and again. Now she was there, in that window, and Thomas knew he had seen her before somewhere, not in his grown years, but when he was a child, he had seen that face, and those eyes with promises of a painful death in them. She was a bad omen; she was a warning that something bad was going to happen.
Last time he had seen her he was thirteen and dreamt about her coming up from the water, walking towards him, laughing that same laughter she did standing in the window. Shortly after his mother was killed in that stupid car-accident and his life was torn to pieces.
"Wha
t's going on, Thomas?" His wife pulled his hand and placed her palm on his forehead. "My God, Thomas, you're burning up. You must have a fever. Maybe you had a nightmare caused by the fever?"
Thomas sighed and tried to calm himself down. He looked at his wife then stroked her cheek. His beautiful, overbearing wife who loved him through everything all these years. He knew at this second that she, much like his parents, would never understand. She would never believe him even if he tried to tell her what he had seen, what he believed it meant. She would do her best to pretend that she understood and believed the girl had been there and wasn't just part of a feverish nightmare. He knew she only pretended for his sake, to not hurt his feelings. He didn't want that, and he certainly didn't want her to worry about him or about what the dream could mean.
"I guess so," he said. "I guess it was nothing but a bad dream."
"Let me get you some ice water," she said and got out of bed, put on a robe and went downstairs. He heard her on the stairs then ran to the window. Still nothing there, no girl, no green light. He sighed with a relief. Maybe it had been a stupid nightmare after all.
Minna returned with the water and he gulped it down quickly. Then he smiled with a "thank you" and put his head on the pillow again.
"The kids are still sound asleep," she said just before she got under the covers and went back to sleep.
Thomas didn't sleep anymore, he lay wide awake, with his eyes open wide and stared into the darkness of the room, thinking about the time when he had come home from school to find his father sitting in the kitchen with his head bowed and eyes red.
He should have known something was very wrong when someone from the school's front office entered the classroom and talked to his teacher while they both glanced in his direction. He should have at least suspected that something bad could have happened when his teacher told him to gather his belongings and go home early, then given him a long hug before letting him go.