Read Online End of the Line (Book 2): Stuck in the Middle by Lara Frater - Free Book Online

looked at me like I slapped her in the face.
                  “Do you want a snort,” I said, showing her the bottle of brandy. She didn’t take Xanax or Vicodin anymore but still had a nippy bottle for her watches. “We were talking about Abe.”
                  “Why?” she said, giving us the amused face.
                  “What’s the matter, you didn’t want to reminisce?” I almost slurred my words. I took a big gulp of cocoa allowing it and the brandy to warm me.
                  “Who would?” She began to put on her boots.
                  “Come on, he kept us together—“
                  She looked peeved I was forcing her to converse with me. I must have been buzzed. “He was a bad leader.”
                  “Come on. This family unit, these decisions how to survive. All Abe’s ideas. We’re all alive because of him.”
                  Grace looked at Jim. “All your ideas, except for the age limit and the twenty person cut off.
    Abe was a bad person and selfish.”
                  “Sounds like you,” Dave said.
                  “I wasn’t your leader. I could be bad and selfish.”
                  Before Grace rarely talked to us, now she at least tried. This is the first time I saw her angry.
                  “Abe had issues, but he did the best he could,” Jim said, forever trying to make peace. She was right at least. A lot of the ideas Abe used came from Jim. In the beginning we didn’t really organize or ration. “I understand wanting to kill yourself. This is a hard world.”
                  “Yes, it is but you don’t become a leader unless you can deal with it.”
                  “Rachel committed suicide,” I said.
                  “We’re not taking about Rachel,” she said, now her anger was on me. “We’re talking about Abe.”
                  “I didn’t see you running to save him. You were the last person who saw him alive, you cow,” Dave said and I knew he didn’t take a drink.
                  Grace wasn’t insulted by what she said. In fact she looked amused. She saw Abe jump off the roof.
    “Were you there to see me, David?” she said. This might be the first time she spoke to Dave directly. He didn’t respond. 
    “In case you were all wondering. I did not get the chance to stop him. He smiled and waved at me which was unusual. I thought he was drunk. He walked to the edge and dove off. I ran when I saw him but not fast enough. So please do not tell me what I did or did not do.”
    I didn’t say anything neither did Jim or Dave. I never knew what exactly had happened on the roof. Grace had never been one to chat.
    She went to the coat rack. Her slender figure would fit any coat, so Jim got her a pretty one but probably not designer enough. She didn’t complain. She slipped on her coat, put on her Hermes scarf and opened the door to let the icy wind in.
    I took another shot. I wasn’t done drinking but was done talking about Abe.
     
                  “Annie, wake up,” Henry’s voice beckoned me from a happy world where everyone was still alive, my parents, my boyfriend, even Mindy was there. We celebrated Christmas around the tree, each grateful for being alive.
                  “Let me sleep unless there is a plague of zombs—“ I had a headache from too many snorts.
                  “Annie, it’s snowing, just a bit. Thought you would want to see. It might be a white Christmas after all.”
                  I didn’t care. I turned over and saw the big fluffy flakes in the window. For a moment I felt sentimental. I got out of bed and ignored my headache. I was already dressed in thermals. I took off my flannel nightgown and added jeans, a tee and a sweater. Henry left to allow me room to