Brandon pulled out his phone, typed something, and showed her the screen. Jessica read it, and the color drained from her face completely. She typed a reply with shaking fingers.
I couldn’t see the words, but I saw Brandon’s response. He typed, “Then tomorrow, the cliffs. No other choice.”
My heart hammered.
The cliffs. What cliffs?
4 hours in, Jessica made one last attempt, her voice breaking.
“Mom, please just drink something. I’m worried about you.”
For a brief moment, I saw the little girl who used to beg me to come watch her soccer games. The girl who cried in my arms after her first heartbreak. The daughter I thought I knew.
But then I remembered the vial, the powder, the calculation in her eyes.
“I’m fine, Jessica,” I said quietly.
She turned away and stared out the window at the endless blue ocean below.
When the captain announced our descent into Honolulu, I glanced at Jessica. Her jaw was clenched, her hands balled into fists. Brandon’s leg bounced nervously across the aisle.
They had failed every attempt to harm me on this flight, and whatever they were planning for the cliffs would happen tomorrow.
I didn’t know which cliffs they meant, but I knew one thing with absolute certainty.
My daughter had not given up her intent to end my life.
Hawaii was everything Robert had promised. Turquoise water stretching to the horizon, warm tropical breezes carrying the sweet scent of plumeriia, endless blue skies, palm trees swayed along the coastline. Couples walked hand in hand on white sand beaches.
It should have been paradise.
Instead, I was arriving at what might become the place where my life ended.
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