Our Finest Hour (The Time Series Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  More from Jennifer

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Our Finest Hour

  Jennifer Millikin

  Copyright © 2017 by Jennifer Millikin

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Interior Design by Under Cover Designs

  JNM, LLC

  Scottsdale, AZ

  ISBN-10: 0-9967845-5-1

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9967845-5-9

  Time passes at the same rate of speed no matter how it’s used. What is up to us is how we spend it.

  Do we harbor fear or hate?

  Do we wage battles on others or within ourselves?

  What if we used the time to forgive and love?

  How much more enjoyable could our hours be?

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Epilogue

  More from Jennifer

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  April fools.

  I’m still waiting for Owen to yell the words.

  How many seconds have passed now?

  Nine?

  Ten?

  Each one is excruciating.

  The longer we’re quiet, the clearer it all becomes.

  This isn’t a joke. He means what he said.

  Still, with a shred of hope left in my rapidly deflating heart, I ask, “Is this just a really bad April fool’s joke?” I despise how my voice shakes.

  His sigh is my answer, but he speaks anyway. “No, Aubrey. It’s bad timing. I’m sor—”

  I pull my phone away from my ear and stare at it, the rest of his sorry floating out into the air. With my thumb I end the call and toss my phone on the bed beside me. I don’t need to hear his apology.

  Eyes squeezed tight, I try to numb myself. Despite my efforts, the feelings come. Horrible, terrible feelings.

  How could I have allowed this? The real question is, how could I have allowed this again?

  It’s my own fault.

  Ignoring Owen McNamera would’ve been the very best thing for me. And I tried. My guard was perfectly intact despite all his persistent visits to the overpriced juice shop where I work on campus. It was obvious he had no desire to drink his vegetables, but every day he came. It was his slow smile that broke down my walls. The way only one corner turned up the tiniest bit, and then, after a few moments, that one side would finally give rise to the other corner. That smile was special. Just for me. Like I was the chosen one. And it was what ultimately took down my walls. No cannons or torpedoes needed. Just something nice and kind, something masquerading as love.

  My vision swirls until the water clouding my eyes spills over. How long have I been lying here? Long enough for the shadows on my bed to lengthen. With the back of my hand, I wipe away any remaining moisture from my cheeks. I will not cry anymore.

  All my emotions have been rounded up and locked down. My walls are rebuilt, even higher than before.

  It's a crappy way to live, but it's what I know. There's comfort there, even if it's not the kind of comfort that comes with happiness or ease. Sometimes comfort is really just doing what you've always done, simply because it's what you know.

  In this case, I’m a pro.

  I've been here before. I know how to watch someone I love walk away.

  “It’s not that I don’t believe in ghosts,” I explain to Britt as she rubs her eyes. She mumbles something about accidentally looking too closely at the sun, and when she pulls her hands away from her face, I see the water pooling on the lower rims of her eyes.

  “Here,” I grab my backup pair of sunglasses from my backpack and hand them to her.

  She slides them on. “Thanks. I couldn’t find mine this morning.”

  I’m not shocked, considering the state she keeps her room in. But I don’t complain, because she keeps the rest of our place spotless.

  “So what were you saying before I tried to stare down the sun?” She throws her backpack’s second strap over her other shoulder and starts toward our apartment.

  “Just that I don’t believe in ghosts, exactly.” Not the ghosts of people who’ve died, anyway. But the ghosts of those who are still living? I believe in those.

  Britt gives me a look as we come to a stop at a light. She presses the walk button and folds her arms across her chest. For a moment she studies me. I’m waiting for her to ask just what it is I believe in, exactly.

  Three minutes ago, the very moment we stepped away from her last class, Britt asked me about ghosts. Her knitted brows and worried expression tell me her opinion on their existence.

  I’d like to poke a fork into the arm of the lab partner who told her the apartment building we live in is haunted.

  “Well," Britt tucks one side of her blond bob behind an ear, “We don’t all have an Owen to protect us from the spirits of the undead.”

 
I peer around, hoping to find something interesting to warrant a subject change. We’re standing in a cluster of pedestrians on a busy street corner, and most people are wearing headphones. If they aren’t, their necks are bent at an awkward angle, staring at their phones and using a finger to scroll. Nothing interesting to comment on.

  “Yes, I'm so lucky to have Owen," I murmur. The light changes, and we step off the curb.

  She walks with purpose, even though we’re headed to our apartment for an afternoon of absolutely nothing. Maybe some studying. Probably some bad TV.

  It’s not hard for me to keep up with Britt. I walk with purpose too. I always have. We pound the stairs to our second-floor apartment. Neither of us is out of breath, a welcome change from nine months ago when we first moved in. If Britt hadn’t been gasping for air each time she scrambled the stairs, she would’ve punched me for choosing the second story.

  When I promised my dad I’d get the safer second-level apartment, I didn’t know Britt Pomeroy was going to answer my ad for a roommate. Nor did I know the wheezing, blond ball of sarcasm who knocked on my door was going to become the best friend I’ve ever had. What mattered was my dad and the promise I made to him. And promises? They mean something to me.

  When we get home, Britt takes out her laptop and navigates to Facebook. “Yesterday was April fools,” she says without looking up. She scrolls through posts, laughing at some, and tossing chip after chip into her mouth. “I totally forgot.”

  Not me.

  I haven’t told Britt that Owen broke up with me. I can’t stand to say the words. I’m humiliated. Mortified I even dared to be happy. Worse, I’m sad. The kind of sadness I promised myself I’d never allow anyone make me feel again. Through fake smiles and an early bedtime, I hide it all from her.

  By the next afternoon, the misery has seeped through the cracks in my walled-off heart, and Britt notices.

  “I’ve never seen you like this." She leans over, plucks a mandarin orange from an old, chipped fruit bowl on the counter, and tosses it in the air twice before her eyes come to rest on me. “What’s your deal?”

  "I don't know what you mean." I say. Obviously I know exactly what she means. Call it a reflexive action, like putting your arms up when a ball comes flying at your head. No need to analyze the hows and whys of my automatic denial. Thanks to the therapist I stopped seeing long ago, I already know. Fear of abandonment, she said. When I left my session that day I told my dad he should get a refund. The only gem in our entire session was when she said it's a natural reaction to what I've been through, that she would expect me to push everyone away. If you didn't push people away, I'd wonder if you were facing an inability to feel. And if that were the case, our visits would be very different.

  I should have told my therapist not to worry, that I'm not facing an inability to feel. If anything, the opposite is my problem. I feel too much. I feel every part of my mother's departure like little stabs of pain all over my body. Most of the pain is concentrated in my heart. That's where the pinches and pulls hurt the most. Right in the center of my chest, where my breath stops in my throat and my chest tightens. Even after thirteen years, I can't get rid of what my mother left behind when she walked away.

  So, no. I don’t believe in the ghosts of the dead. But the ghosts of the living? Yeah, those are real.

  That night I tell Britt what happened.

  She flies off the handle, cussing and pacing, talking fast and making references to mob movies. Which is almost funny, considering she’s five-foot-two, and only when she straightens her shoulders. Hardly a formidable foe.

  “Nobody is going to sleep with the fishes.” I speak with my most placating voice.

  My chest warms as I watch her from my spot on the arm of the couch. For once I feel cared for, like someone worthy of defense.

  It’s not fair for me to think that way. My dad would defend me to his dying breath, if I ever gave him the opportunity—which I don’t. I like handling things on my own.

  “Aubrey, we can’t just let him get away with this.” She throws a hand up in my direction. “You need to call him back. We need to call him names. Lot's of bad names.” She wrinkles her nose and makes a sound of disgust.

  I shake my head. “Let it go." Calling Owen ranks very low on my list of things I want to do, falling somewhere near using pliers to pull out my toenails.

  Britt blinks twice. “Why aren’t you having the right reaction to this?”

  I give her an answer, something about having a forty-eight-hour head start on feeling angry. Truthfully, as devastated as I am, a part of me knew Owen would leave me eventually. On some level I’ve been mourning the demise of our relationship since the second I let his smile carry me away.

  “Owen is going to regret his choice.” She wraps an arm around my shoulders. “I promise.”

  I smile because it’s what I’m supposed to do.

  Just before I fall asleep that night, I see her. From behind, like always. I think maybe this time she’ll look back, because my heart was broken by a boy, something that’s never happened before. Shouldn’t mothers be there for their daughters?

  Even my imagination can’t make her turn around.

  My mom was pretty. No, my mom was beautiful. A kind of beauty that belonged in the pages of the fashion magazines she kept stacked on the side table in the living room. My friends wanted to come to my house because they loved my mom, and I loved that they loved her.

  Not only was my mom beautiful, she could bake like Mrs. Fields and Betty Crocker all wrapped up in one. She made the very best blueberry muffins that anyone ever put in their mouths. They would sigh as they took a bite, saying things like, “It’s a crime how good these are.”

  The mothers of my friends liked to visit my mom too. Maybe they were envious of her. Beautiful woman, happy home, husband with a good job. My dad wasn’t the president of the bank or anything, but he was a journeyman. Working with electricity is a dangerous job, but the trade-off is that it pays well.

  Despite his good-paying job, he insisted on keeping an old Chevy truck that never ran well. “Broken more than it runs,” my mother would grumble. She had a car that worked just fine, so she didn’t complain too loudly about the old Chevy.

  The Saturday she left was like all the other Saturdays before it. I sat playing with my dolls in the living room. My Barbie could bake blueberry muffins that were better than all the rest, just like my mom could. Dad was in the garage, probably lying under his truck, rolling out every so often for a tool.

  Mom came through the living room, her chin tucked against her chest. That’s what I remember most about the day she left. Normally she walked with her head up, her eyes calm and clear. But on that day, she rushed past me, only five feet away from where I sat. I looked up as she passed. I couldn’t see her eyes.

  “Mommy, will you please get me yogurt-covered-raisins?” I knew she was going to the store. She’d told me ten minutes ago when she’d gone to change her clothes.

  She never responded. She just kept walking.

  Her elbow jutted out, bent at an angle on the side of her body, and for years I would see that in my dreams. At eight I didn’t understand why it was bent that way, but eventually I figured it out. She was covering her mouth.

  My heart told me it was to keep her sob inside, because even she knew what she was doing was going to damage me forever. My brain told me it was to keep her from telling me what she was doing, knowing I would find out soon enough.

  I found the piece of paper first. Only five words written.

  I can’t do this anymore.

  Can’t do what? I wondered.

  The longer she stayed gone, the more I understood.

  I can’t be a wife.

  I can’t be a mother.

  I can’t make myself want this life.

  I can’t make myself love our daughter.

  I can’t do this anymore.

  My dad threw away her note, but I grabbed it from the trash when he wasn't loo
king. For three years I studied the familiar handwriting, the scrawl matching the loving sentiments she'd written in my birthday cards. Words penned by the same hand, but the message vastly different.

  Owen and I used to see each other all the time.

  Meet me for a kiss before my afternoon class?

  I have a twenty-five-minute break at ten. Let’s grab coffee.

  Can I come over after your last class?

  But now it’s like he has vanished. I’ve been waiting to run into him, a moment I assumed inevitable, but it still hasn’t come.

  One week went by. Then two. I didn’t know Owen was a magician, skilled in disappearing acts.

  But I did know a person could live with a broken heart, and that’s what I was doing. Waiting for the pieces to go back together, to drift towards one another and form a makeshift semblance of what they had been before.

  I thought about calling my dad, but our relationship wasn’t really prepared for phone calls about boys. He’s always provided the basics for me, the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but warm fuzzies? Not so much. He tried, I think, to give me a mom. He went on dates, and sometimes he’d go on more than a few with the same woman and bring her home to meet me. After a while, I felt like the lost baby bird in the Dr. Seuss book, Are You My Mother?

  Eventually he quit trying. Then it was just us, two planets orbiting each other, not certain how to break the orbit and collide. Once I could drive, I did all the grocery shopping. Prepared meals, cleaned the house. When there’s a hole, it’s natural for whatever is left around it to slide toward the crater, to fill the space. That's what we did, slowly. Day by day, year by year, we slid into the void, until we became a fully-functioning, two person unit.