Goodbye, Mr. Regret

Chapter 108

Timothy stared at the message on his phone, his dark eyes fixed on the glowing

screen for a long while.

[Do you like it?]

He typed a reply.

[Yeah, just like Happy and Lucky.]

He pressed his lips together, thinking.

If Sheila liked them, there was no harm in giving her one too.

There were twenty-two left.

He bought them all, though he only intended to keep one.

The rest, he'd throw away.

It was just an excuse to set one aside for Sheila.

[If you like it, keep it.]

Capital City.

Jessica was too afraid to sleep. She huddled in the corner of the hotel room, knees pulled to her chest, shivering so hard her fingernails nearly broke the skin of her palms.

Every clap of thunder struck like a hammer against her heart.

briefly flicker into view. The wind howled, rain hammered the windows with a relentless drone, and Jessica felt her courage drain away, fear flooding every corner of

crashed

evening, the sky was heavy and gray, rain threatening at any

twenty, told her to run to the corner store for a bottle of soy sauce,

had spent ages picking out candy, even choosing

on the way home, swinging her bag of groceries, when

a

froze. When she finally looked, she saw it was

and unseeing, blood spreading

dark,

eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

a woman

surrounded

to the ground. She pushed

to call out, to

but no

the thunder and lightning

home, locked Jessica alone in their apartment, and followed the ambulance to the

lights were out. In the darkness, the image of her mother's broken body

stopped, battering her small world with

why her

in her body, the time she'd wasted picking out

only she had come home earlier, maybe her mother

her teeth, hands shaking as she

screen was blinding

Her lips trembled.

nearly made her drop

in ragged gasps,