Chapter 2

I watched my mother’s body hit the pavement, and a tremor went through my own.

The splatter of blood on the concrete told me everything. I didn’t have a mother anymore.

There were screams and cries all around me, but I just held her, numb.

"She said she had the money for the surgery. What happened?"

"I heard her sister took the money to go on vacation with her boyfriend…"

I held my mother's body, and a black, bottomless hatred filled my heart.

A week ago, I had won fifty thousand dollars on a lottery ticket.

I was ecstatic. It was a miracle. It was enough to pay for my mother's surgery.

But the next day, the ticket was gone.

And my sister, Cora, and her boyfriend were on a flight to Europe.

My mother missed her chance for the surgery.

It was a new, experimental procedure, with an eighty percent success rate. The doctor had been flown in specially.

I got on my knees and begged him to give me a few more days, that I could get the money.

I stood outside my mother's hospital room, my hands shaking, and called my sister hundreds of times. She never picked up.

My mother must have known what was happening.

She just held my hand from her bed and told me not to worry.

But today, she had climbed to the roof alone.