Sometimes I wanted to do what Mom was doing—say “screw it” and just waste away. Who’d blame me? But then, who’d take care of Olivia? Out of nowhere, I thought of Hayden Cromwell. Hours after the weird library incident, I was pretty sure I’d imagined him standing by the window.

No one that good-looking had a reason to be that creepy.

A quick check of Mom’s room induced the same urge I felt every time I looked in on her—the rampant need to throw something at her sleeping head. She sprawled across the bed, a broken, beautiful doll with deep red curls and porcelain skin. Mom was utterly useless. Was it even humanly possible to sleep as much as she did? Maybe she just pretended to sleep so much. I really didn’t know. Each day that’d passed after the accident, my mom had simply faded further away. Just like the memory of my dad’s face.

I approached her bed, folding my arms around me. “Mom?”

Silence.

“Mom, if… if you’re listening, Olivia really needs you.”

Nothing.

A burning kicked up in the back of my throat, and my chest felt like it was weighed down with cement. “She deserves better than this. She needs you to be her mom.”

Still nothing.

I whipped around and left her bedroom. The heaviness in my chest lingered as I pulled out the cash, separating just enough to cover the bare essentials.

We were running out of money. Dad’s life insurance would be gone within the next year. What would I do then? College was out of the question. Hell, finishing my senior year might be out the window if I needed to get a job sooner than I’d planned.

Downstairs, Olivia waited for me; her face stained with the remnants of her earlier tears. I looked away, feeling like an epic failure. “You ready?”

Tipping her chin down, she shrugged her tiny shoulders. She didn’t talk to me the whole way out to the Jeep. While she buckled herself in the backseat, I eyed the needle on the gas gauge and mentally counted the leftover funds.

“Emmie?”

I glanced over my shoulder at her. “What?”

Her eyes were wide, a vibrant jade color. There was something in them that gave me pause. Unease unfolded in the pit of my stomach, making my hands tremble.

“I have a really bad feeling,” Olivia said, picking at a patch of glitter on her dress. “Like the one I had before… before Daddy died. Do you remember? I have that feeling again.”

Of course I remembered that feeling.

But Olivia had been three at the time of the accident, and I’d barely paid attention to any of the babble that’d come out of her mouth.

I still remembered, though.

She’d leaned across the backseat and grasped my arm. “Something bad is going to happen,” she’d whispered.

And I’d frowned at her and ripped my arm away, annoyed because our parents had been arguing again—arguing about her. Shaking myself out of those memories, I rubbed my forehead, feeling a headache starting in.