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Black Friday
Silvia needed a while to stop crying, the tablet in frail balance on her lap. Finally, she was able to lie down again and turn off the light. Not to sleep, she doubted she would be so lucky, but to think. She lit the umpteenth cigarette and smoked with her reddened eyes up on the ceiling.
She was dying to reply to such a low blow, and she could think of a dozen fitting ways off the top of her head. But she had to pick only one. While she tried to calm down, stubborn embers still burning in her chest, she forced herself to go over every possible answer she could think of, promising she wouldn’t pick one until she’d listed them all.
Yeah, she was trying to cheat herself into a silly excuse to keep from replying. At least it gave her something to muse about, instead of spiraling down into memories of him.
Somehow she fell asleep. To regret it deeply in the morning, when she surfaced from an upsetting thread of awful dreams about him. In them, Jim would
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