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As Meg took her first few steps, overwhelming pain shot through her feet and up through her legs. She wondered if, perhaps, she didn’t have some frostbite. But with each step, the pain dulled, and soon she was able to make some semblance of a normal gait. Jonathan had offered his arm, and she could tell he was growing a bit impatient with her as she struggled to keep up, but as she grew stronger, her speed increased, and soon he began to tug on her less as they made their way through the throng of people.
“Do you want to speak to Kelly first? She’s just over there?” he asked gesturing across the crowd.
Meg could see her friend and her family off in the distance. Though Daniel was very pale, Ruth was dancing around her mother’s feet, and Baby Lizzy was cooing at her. She caught Kelly’s eyes and held them for a second, a small smile flashing between them. “No,” she replied. “Later.”
Jonathan seemed reliev
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“The water was so cold, little crystals of ice immediately formed atop anything and everything that crested the surface. The sensations below weren’t any better, however. It was as if a thousand tiny pins were plunged into my flesh all at the same time. Even through my leather shoes, my coat. It didn’t matter; so I took them off. The entire Atlantic Ocean was already pulling me down. I didn’t need anything else hastening my journey to the abyss.”The man in the brown leather chair cleared his throat and adjusted his spectacles. “And then what do you remember next?”There was a long pause of consideration as thoughts fought to both spring to the surface and hide deep in the recesses of his mind. At last, a sentence was formulated. “I didn’t have a lot of time to decide what to do. There’d been plenty of chances, mind you, to climb into one of the lifeboats. I’d declined. Even though I’d been below d
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