My greatest fear was hurting Sasha myself with all that frantic movement, but my daughter continued screaming vigorously inside her blankets.
My chest hurt when I breathed, like needle stabs beneath my left arm.
Andre began hitting my shoulder and the uninjured side of my back. He choked on his sobs, grabbed my clothes tightly, and struck me again. In the end, he clung to me and cried against my shoulder while I kept moving without stopping.
I didn’t stop to see if our pursuer was there.
I couldn’t hear it.
I was half blind, with half my senses failing me. I couldn’t concentrate on anything because the other half of me was pulling in the opposite direction, telling me that Andre was right and that I should go back for his mother.
My stomach felt like a stone.
Her absence was like a
