Silently

into

the

Night

by

Candace Osmond

Copyright © 2017 Candace Osmond

All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-1-988159-48-5

First Edition

Digital Version

Cover Design by Majeau Designs

The characters, places, and events portrayed in this book are completely fiction and are in no way meant to represent real people or places.

DEDICATION

To my mother.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I owe the completion of this book to my dear friend Fleisha who read and reread and reread and then read once more, until the book was perfect. Thank you.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

About the Author

Chapter One

Chapter One

“Life asked Death, why do people love me but hate you? Death responded, because you are a beautiful lie, and I'm the painful truth.” – Unknown

The clocks did not stop. No guardian angel took her by the hand. Nor did her life flash before her eyes. The only light in the living room was dappled, orange-red and gloomy; the last slivers of sunset peeking in through her old, nicotine-yellowed window blinds.

Blythe Foley knew death was near, she knew it like she knew the scents that augured in each and every change of the seasons. This smell in particular was so specific, so unmistakable, she shuddered at the memory it evoked. She craned her neck to make sure the windows were closed. They were. No way was this an actual smell in the room, then. It was her brain playing tricks on her, prepping her for the end. The book she’d been reading, The Girl on the Train, slid off her lap and tumbled onto the carpet.

As she bent to pick it up, a twinge in her left arm drew an old but familiar pain. It tightened like a red-hot piano wire all the way up her arm to her shoulder, where the pain creased and threatened to snap into her chest.

But it didn’t. It dissipated.

As Blythe sank back in her favorite armchair, shivering in a cold sweat, gasping for breath, the relief was so strong she started to cry. Yes, she would get to say goodbye to Rose and Andy. All she needed was a few more days. So close to the end, the only thing she wanted from life now was to spend a bit more time with her children, no matter how distant they’d been lately. Blythe scooped up her framed photo of the three of them, taken on the last vacation they’d spent together—Palm Springs, summer 2008—and clutched it to her chest. For Pete’s sake, that was the memory she wanted to take with her, not the one death was insisting she…

“Since when did I insist on anything?”