Bartering Her Innocence

“She wandered along a pathway between old graves with stones leaning at an angle or covered in lichen towards a newer section of the cemetery, where stones were brighter, the flowers fresher.
She found it there and felt the same tug of disbelief—the same pang of pain—she felt whenever she saw it, the simple heart-shaped stone beneath which her tiny child was buried, the simple iron lace-work around the perimeter.
She knelt down to the sound of the cry of gulls and the crash of waves against the cliffs. ‘Hello, Leo,’ she said softly. ‘It’s Mummy.’ Her voice cracked on the word and she had to stop and take a deep breath before she could continue. ‘I’ve brought you a present.’
Bubble wrap gave way to tissue paper as she carefully unwrapped the tiny gift. ‘It’s a horse,’ she said, holding the glass up to the sunlight to check it for fingerprints. ‘All the way from Venice. I saw a man make one from a fistful of sand.’
She placed it softly in the lawn at the base of the simple stone. ‘Oh, you should have seen it, Leo, it was magical, the way he[…]”

Excerpt From: Morey, Trish. “Bartering Her Innocence.” Harlequin,
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Samsung 16GB Galaxy Tab 2 Wi-Fi Tablet - GT-P5113TSYXAR (Google Affiliate Ad)The scene was so evocative, it made me cry. My husband knew I was reading a book when he saw me. It was so heartbreaking. Trish captured the right tone, emotion, on writing this particular scene. As I was reading, when the heroine mentioned "it's mummy". I knew my tears would fall. If you want a good kind of cry, read it.