The Last Breath, by Kimberly Belle
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The Last Breath, by Kimberly Belle
Best Ebook PDF Online The Last Breath, by Kimberly Belle
One woman will stop at nothing to discover the devastating truth about her family…
Chasing disasters around the globe keeps humanitarian aid worker Gia Andrews away from her own ground zero. Now, after sixteen years in jail for the murder of her stepmother in small-town Tennessee, Gia's father has come home to die of cancer. And she's responsible for his care.
Resuming the role of daughter to the town's most infamous murderer means confronting the past she's spent over a decade avoiding. But in the end, the truth about what really happened may have deadlier consequences than she could have ever anticipated…
The Last Breath, by Kimberly Belle- Amazon Sales Rank: #1203532 in Books
- Brand: Belle, Kimberly
- Published on: 2015-06-30
- Released on: 2015-06-30
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.59" h x 1.06" w x 4.22" l, .41 pounds
- Binding: Mass Market Paperback
- 400 pages
Review "The Last Breath will leave you breathless. This edgy and emotional thriller will keep you guessing until the very end." -New York Times bestselling author Heather Gudenkauf"Powerful and complex with an intensity drawn out through each page, The Last Breath is a story of forgiveness and betrayal and one I couldn't put down!" -New York Times bestselling author Steena Holmes
About the Author
Kimberly Belle is the author of The Last Breath, The Ones We Trust, and The Marriage Lie. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Agnes Scott College and has worked in fundraising for nonprofits at home and abroad. She divides her time between Atlanta and Amsterdam.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. FOR AID WORKERS, HOME CAN MEAN A LOT of things. A two-bedroom ranch with a picket fence. A fourth-story walk-up in the city. A mud hut under a banana tree. A country listed on a passport. It can be big or small or anything in between.One thing all these homes share, though, is that aid workers miss them. They long to go there. They are homesick.Not me. I've spent the past sixteen years running from my home, and what happened there. Could have lived the rest of my life never returning to the place where I will always be known as the murderer's daughter.And yet here I sit in my old driveway, in a rental parked behind a shiny new Buick. More than thirty-six hours into this new disaster—my disaster—and I've accomplished exactly nothing more than a crusty coffee stain down the front of my jeans and a mean case of jet lag.Embrace the chaos, Gia. Over the course of the past seven thousand miles, it has become my mantra.Uncle Cal climbs out of his car, and he's wearing his usual outfit: gleaming reptile skin stretched across pointy cowboy boots, Brooks Brothers suit of smoky pin-striped wool, black leather jacket worn soft and supple. Here in the hills of Appalachia, it's a look perfectly suitable for church, a fancy restaurant or a courtroom. As one of the highest paid criminal lawyers in Tennessee, Cal's worn it in all three.I follow his lead and step out of the rental. It's mid-February and Rogersville—a tiny blip on the Eastern Tennessee map—is in the death throes of winter. My ancient fleece is not equipped to handle the Appalachian Mountain cold, and I long for my winter coat, still in mothballs in a London suburb. Cal opens his arms and I step into their warmth, inhaling his familiar scent, a combination of leather, designer aftershave and Juicy Fruit gum."Welcome home, baby girl," he says into my hair.Home.I twist my neck to face the house I've not seen for sixteen years, and a shudder of something unpleasant hits me between the shoulder blades. Once a place that instilled in me a sense of refuge and comfort, this house now provokes the exact opposite. Grief. Fear. Dread. This house isn't home. Home shouldn't give you the creeps.Cal's hands freeze on my protruding scapula and he steps back, his gaze traveling down my frame. Thanks to a particularly nasty bout of food poisoning last month, it's a good ten pounds lighter than the last time he hugged me, back when I was already high-school skinny. "I thought you were putting an end to the famine, not succumbing to it.""If you're ever on the Horn of Africa, you should probably stay away from the street stalls in Dadaab. Just because they claim their meat is fresh doesn't mean it's true. Or for that matter, that it's even meat.""Good tip." He pulls the toothpick from his molars and gives me his trademark squint, but there's a smile in his tone. "I'll try to remember that."A lucky break Cal had called it when he finally tracked me down in Kenya. There was more, something about a perjury scandal and a diagnosis that required full-time, in-home hospice care, but by then I wasn't really listening. I was too busy wondering on what planet capping off sixteen years of high-security confinement by coming home to die would be considered lucky.I swallow a sudden lump. "Is he in a lot of pain?"Cal doesn't have to ask who I mean, and at the reminder of the cancer squeezing his only brother's pancreas, grief muddies his brow. "Not yet. But he will be very soon."The lump returns and puts down roots."For an innocent man to end his prison term like this… " He sighs, and his breath makes puffy wisps in the February air. "I've got lots of choice words to say about it, none of them fit for your ears."From the moment Cal arrived on the scene—before my father was a suspect, before he signed on as my father's attorney, even before Ella Mae's body had been photographed and bagged and carried away—his belief in my father's innocence has been unwavering.For me, the situation was never that clear. If I thought my father was capable of murder, that he premeditated and carried out a plan to suffocate Ella Mae Andrews, his wife and my stepmother, I'm not certain I could forgive either him or his behavior. In fact, I'm not certain I would even be here, that I would have traveled all this way for a last goodbye.But I came all this way because I'm not certain. In my father's case, the evidence is unclear, the testimony conflicted. The shadows of my doubt run in both directions.I stuff my icy hands into my front jeans pockets and shiver, not merely from the cold.Cal takes the gesture as his cue and reaches into his pocket, where a set of keys jingles. "Ready to get inside before you freeze to death?"No. My heart races, and every tiny hair soldiers to attention on the back of my neck, commanding me to run. Never again. No."Ready as I'll ever be."I follow Cal up the five steps to the wraparound porch, summoning the detached efficiency that's made me one of Earth Aid International's top disaster relief experts. I can't manage even an ounce of objectivity. This disaster is too close, its aftermath still too painful. I can't detach from its reality.A reality that, according to the doctors, could last anywhere from three weeks to three months."The renters moved out about six months ago," Cal says without turning his head, searching through his key ring for the right one. The sisal mat under his feet mocks me with its cheery message: Welcome, Guests. As if anyone but me and Cal will be stepping on it, waiting to be invited in to pay their last respects. Not in a Million Years would be more like it."Good timing, I suppose.""I've had the house painted. And all the furniture is new. Appliances, too.""What happened to Dad's old stuff?""I donated most of the furniture and clothes to Goodwill after the trial. The rest is in a storage facility in Morristown. I'll get you the address and the access combination if you want to head over there.""I doubt I'll have the time." Or the inclination. Digging through old memories sounds like torture to me.Uncle Cal twists the key in the handle and the door swings open with a groan, a sound I find eerily appropriate. He steps inside like he owns the place, which I suppose by now he probably does, but I don't follow. I can't. Somebody switched out my sneakers for boots of lead. My knees wobble, and I grip the doorjamb to keep from falling down.A strange thing happens when a home turns into a crime scene. Its contents are labeled, cataloged and photographed. Walls become scene boundaries, doors and windows, the perpetrator's entry and exit. Seemingly ordinary objects—dust bunnies behind the couch, scuff marks on the stairs, a tarnished nickel under the carpet—take on all sorts of new significance. And the people living there, in a place now roiling with bad memories and even worse juju, no longer think of it as home.But what about that one spot where the victim took her last breath, where her heart gave its final, frantic beat? What do you do with that place? Build a shrine on top of it, wave a bouquet of smoking sage around it or pretend it's not there?At the foot of the stairs, Cal stops and turns, studiously ignoring my distress. My gaze plummets to the fake Persian under his feet, and a wave of sick rises from the pit of my belly. Just because I can't see the spot doesn't mean I've forgotten what happened there.Or for that matter, that I'm ever stepping on it."Shut the door, please, Gia."I take a deep breath, square my shoulders and follow him into the house."My assistant Jennie did all the shopping," he says, gesturing with his keys toward the living room. Except for the unmade hospital bed in the corner, the decor—oversize furniture, silk ferns in dark pots, framed paintings of exotic landscapes on the walls—looks plucked from the pages of a Rooms To Go catalog. "I hope it'll do."I finger a plastic pinecone in a wooden bowl on the dresser and peer down the hallway toward the kitchen. There's literally nothing here that I recognize. Probably better that way. "She did a great job.""The bedrooms are ready upstairs. Thought we'd let the nurse take the master. You don't mind sharing the hall bath with me on the weekends, do you?"I smile, hoping it doesn't come across as forced as it feels. "I've gone months with nothing but a bucket, a bar of soap and a muddy stream. I think I can handle sharing a bathroom."One corner of Cal's mouth rises in what looks almost like pride. "You'd make someone a fine huntin' partner."He motions for me to follow him into the kitchen at the back of the house, where he points to a credit card and iPhone on the Formica counter. "Jennie stocked the kitchen with the basics, but there's enough money on that account to buy anything else you need. You probably won't need it for a couple of days, though."I peek into the refrigerator, check the cabinets above the coffee machine, peer around the corner into the open pantry. "There's enough food here to feed half of Hawkins County for weeks."Cal smiles. "That's the great thing about Jennie. She always goes above and beyond." He plucks the iPhone from the counter and passes it to me. "She also programmed all the numbers you'll need into the phone. The lead officer assigned to the case will be calling to set up a meeting first thing tomorrow morning. The hospice nurse arrives tomorrow morning at eight, and the motorcade and ambulance with your father, sometime before noon. And the local doctors, hospitals and the funeral home have been notified.""Sounds like everything's been taken care of."He smiles, and his voice softens. "Just trying to make things as easy as possible for you, darlin'. I know you'd rather be anywhere but here."I think of some of the worst places I've been sent. Overpopulated Dhaka, where if the water doesn't kill you, the air will. The slums of Abidjan after floods and mudslides have swept away too many of its children. The dusty streets of Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp, where malnutrition and cholera compete for leading cause of death.Uncle Cal has a point."And don't think you're completely out here on your own," he says after a long stretch of silence. "I'm less than an hour down the road, and so are your brother and sister. Do me a favor and don't let either of them off the hook, okay? This concerns their father, too."I half nod, half shrug. When it comes to our father, Bo would rather bury himself in his work than admit the situation affects him, while Lexi prefers to pretend he's already dead. How can I let my siblings off the hook when neither of them are willing to acknowledge there is one? It seems as if the only person not getting off the hook around here is me.Cal pulls me in for a hug, dropping a kiss on the top of my head. "Call me anytime, okay? Day or night. I'll pick up, no matter where I am or what I'm doing.""Promise?""I promise." His tone is reassuring, but he's already backing away, already moving toward the door. "I'll see you Saturday morning."He gives my shoulder one last squeeze and disappears into the hallway, and I'm slammed with a wave of panic. Disasters and destruction of global magnitude I can handle. Facing my father alone, not so much.I rush down the hall in his wake. "Uncle Cal?"The desperate note in my voice stops him at the door, and he turns to face me."Explain to me again why you can't stay. Why you won't be here tomorrow when Dad gets here."He scrubs a hand through his hair, now salt-and-pepper but still thick and shiny as ever. "Because I'm busy stalling the retrial. God willing and the creek don't rise, your father won't spend another second of his life in either a courtroom or a prison cell."A casket sure seems like the ultimate prison to me.A few seconds later he's gone, leaving me to wonder how I ended up here. In a town I vowed never to return to. In a house filled with ghosts and memories I'll never outrun. In a life I have spent the past sixteen years trying to escape.But most of all, I wonder how I ended up here alone.2BACK IN THE HOUSE, I PUT ON A KETTLE AND rummage through the cabinets for tea. Cal's assistant must be either misinformed or seriously delusional about the number of mourners we will be expecting because she bought us a 312-count, industrial-sized box of Lipton tea bags. If we get through even one row of them, it will be a miracle. I rip open the cellophane wrapping with my teeth, pull out a bag and drop it into a yellow ceramic mug.The sharp, bitter scent reminds me of some of my British colleagues, who are convinced a spot of tea is the cure to all emotional ails. My boss, Elsie, a hard-nosed type, drinks enough of the stuff to poison her liver…thanks to the generous splash of bourbon she adds when things in the field get really hairy. If only life were that easy.Unlike the satellite phone I carry in the field, Cal's iPhone has only a handful of contacts, most of them people I've never met and, after burying my father, will probably never think of again. It doesn't take me long to find Bo.His cell goes straight to voice mail, so I leave what must be my fifth message in as many days, careful to keep my voice level. Five years older and light-years more serious, my brother has always preferred that people reserve their zeal for backyard fireworks and the Nature Channel, and he doesn't respond well to gushing.I have better success with Lexi, who picks up on the second ring. I abandon my tea and squeal, "Lexi!"Unlike Bo, my sister welcomes enthusiasm. Demands it, even."Is it true? Is it really true?" Lexi's familiar voice, the same gravelly one that used to give boys all over Hawkins County wet dreams. "Did my do-gooder little sister finally come home from Lord knows where?""It's true that I'm here, yes. But nowadays, home is in Kenya.""Well, laa-tee-daa." She stretches out her words, loads them up with an extra serving of Tennessee twang. "Don't that sound fancy."I snort at what I know to be a joke. Lexi is no dummy. She has a master's in finance from Stanford, runs a local chain of banks and could kick even Alex Trebek's ass at Jeopardy. Not only is she aware of my latest whereabouts, she knows Dadaab is pretty much the polar opposite of fancy. My chest seizes with a wave of sudden affection for my sister, who I haven't hugged in…six years? Has it really been that long?"Where are you?" I say, switching gears. "Because I'm coming there right after I lock up the house.""I'm going to need a little more time than that." Her tone takes a serious turn, matching mine, and her voice and vowels soften into the more generic timbre she perfected in college. Less country hick, more Southern belle. Unlike me, Lexi can turn her accent on and off like a faucet. "I'm about to head into a staff meeting, but I could meet you after for a late dinner. Say, seventhirty?"I check my watch. Three and a half hours I can fill with a nap and a shower, in that order. "Perfect. So where's the place to be on a Wednesday night these days?""It's Thursday, actually, not that it matters. And there's only one place to be every night, and that's the Roadkill Bar and Grill in town."Roadkill? I make a face. "Do I have to bring my own rodent, or do they run it down for me?"She laughs, a throaty, musical sound that makes me wish I'd called more often. "Don't tell me you've forgotten your roots, young lady.""I haven't forgotten. My palate has just evolved to more refined creatures, like stray animals. And last month in the Philippines I tried this thing called balut, a fertilized duck embryo that's boiled alive and eaten shell and all."Lexi makes a retching sound. "I think I'd rather starve to death."Now it's my turn to laugh. Though I've always been adventurous with food and my sister the pickiest eater in Appalachia, Lexi does have a point. Balut tastes just as bad the first time as it does the second, on its way back up.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful. One heck of a story for a debut author! This book is one of my favorites for 2014! Looking forward to her next 2 books! By LaurieHere dotcom MY TAKE:5 AMAZING STARSRight off the bat, this is one of my favorite books for 2014! I LOVED this book! I didn't want this book this book to end, so I read this one as slow as I could because I enjoyed it so much! The writing is excellent for this debut author, which is what originally pulled me right into this story. I felt like I personally knew Gia right from the start because I was able to understand her situation easily thanks to the author for writing her character so well. For myself, this seems it would be a very difficult subject to write, but this author hit it out of the park! She is one of those writers who demands you read this from start to finish without putting the book down! I even reread one of the most important scenes in the book - again!This is suspense/women's fiction/murder mystery all rolled into one, and how can it be a murder mystery when a jury found her father guilty all those years ago? Things pop up that puts doubt into your mind.This book is about a woman, Gia, in her early 30's, who works running all around the world helping other people. Anywhere she can go that is far, far away from her own home in the Appalachians in Tennessee, she goes! She needs to learn how to not allow her past influence her future, but this is a pretty hard thing to do while in her hometown, which is why she runs around the world. Gia She feeds the hungry, cleans up after disasters, goes into war-torn cities and more, but the only place she can't face is the city where she is from. Now Gia has no choice because the prison where her father, Ray, is serving time for killing her step-for mother Ella Mae, is sending him home to die from cancer, and with hospice. He doesn't have long to live as he is only skin and bones left for the most part, and she can't forgive him even though he is dying, and unlike her brother and sister, but there is one thing she can do, and that is face him through his death. Her uncle will be there to help her, maybe, and perhaps she'll have to grab her siblings and drag them kicking and screaming with her to help her despite how they feel.Fannie is the Hospice Worker. She deserves extra special mention in this review. Not only in this review, but even the author recognizes her and ALL the hospice care workers out there. Fannie is pretty special, though! She was the sweetest little thing! She knew when the family needed to be together, when they did not, cared wonderfully for her patient knowing his needs, baked wonderful goodies, and was just a gem! A shoulder to lean on, too!They have a nasty 24/7 drunken neighbor named Dean, who lives next door to them. He's a mean 'ole thing.While Gia's trying to come to terms with her father's death, forgiveness or not, she goes to the local bar, Roadkill, to forget, and meets Jake. Oh, Jake! Wow! Oh, swoooooon worthy! He made her knees weak and her skin tingle. HOT! Things get VERY heated between the two of them. I loved their scenes when they were together! Too bad every girl doesn't have a Jake, although maybe some of you do! (This should probably tell you this is not a book for the under 17 crowd.) So Jake takes Gia's mind off of everything that is happening at home for the most part. There is one thing she can't do and that is to say no to Jake.Gia always had a question about her Uncle Cal, and why didn't the appeal he filed result in a new trial for his father? That was on her and her siblings minds very strongly. Was his work really shoddy? Cal. Brother to Gia's father. An attorney who thought he knew his stuff, was highly doubted at times because he never had a very good answer as to the 'why' of things in this case. Why didn't his brother get a new trial? Why didn't he call this witness, or that one, there are so many holes in this story, until their final blow-up. Then a shocking turn of events rocks this story to the core, and Jake's included in this mess, too. (Not Jake!!!) Ella Mae. Ella Mae was Ray's wife. She wasn't the perfect wife, not one who kept her wedding vows either, although she is central to the story because she is the one who was murdered.This book is full of secrets, doubt, sibling rivalry, Gia and Jake, and one inept lawyer, or so the kids think. When things unfold, you'll be rereading a second time what I did, too! Don't miss this book! Make sure you set enough time aside so you can enjoy it like it should be, from start to finish! I HIGHLY recommend reading this book if this sounds the least bit interesting to you!In the back of the book there is a Reader's Guide which I read, and the questions were really good to get you thinking even more, so this book would be a really good book for Book Clubs. The author also has detailed descriptions of her next 2 books she is writing! I can't wait for them to come out!I received this book for FREE from the Publisher, Harlequin, and NetGalley, in exchange to read and write a review about it. "Free" means I was provided with ZERO MONIES to do so, but to enjoy the pure pleasure of reading it and giving my own honest opinion no matter whether it is positive or negative. I am disclosing this information in accordance with the law set here: http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html., The Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255, 16 CFR 255, Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising Federal Acquisition Regulation.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful. Debut novel packs a punch. Great for book clubs as well! By Stacie Gorkow Kimberly Belle packs a punch with a gripping prologue and keeps you turning the pages, assessing your beliefs and leaving you holding your breath all the way to the end. This is Belle's debut novel and hopefully more are to come.The book begins with the murder of Ella Mae in a small Appalachian community. We know that Ella Mae knew her murderer, but is the murderer the man who spent sixteen years in prison for the crime? Gia, Ella Mae's step-daughter, has spent her adult life traveling the country assisting with disasters, feeding the hungry, and doing everything she can to stay away from her home full of bad memories. After being gone since high school, she must now come home to care for her father Ray, the murderer. He has been released from prison to live out his final days at home with hospice. Gia is thrown into chaos with a father she hasn't seen since he was taken to prison, two siblings who want nothing to do with their father, a street full of protesters, and a nagging doubt about her father committing the crime the entire community thinks he did.As Gia returns to the home Ella Mae was murdered in, a slew of emotions surface. Her siblings refuse to answer her calls and run out the back doors of their office. Her uncle, Cal, who is also her father's lawyer, continues to fill her with lies about the case and the local bartender's food (and sex appeal) are too hard to resist after living in third-world countries. Gia begins to unravel memories that were long buried and starts to piece together the night that Ella Mae was murdered. When she finds out the truth about Ella Mae's murderer, it may be more than she can handle.This is definitely a page turner and one that will keep you guessing all the way to the end. There were several occasions where I was sure I knew who the murderer was and then my opinions were abruptly changed, only to be changed again a few chapters later. There is plenty of family drama and secrets to keep the reader interested and eager to start the next chapter. I'm sure you will be on the edge of your seat in the final chapters.Along with the telling of Gia's story, we are taken back to Ella Mae's final days. We learn some of Ella Mae's secrets and are given more insight into who may have been Ella Mae's murderer. You will wish there had been a different outcome for Ella Mae. Her choices in life, as well as her murder, left ripple effects on her family and the whole community.Each character in the story has their own personality and is vividly portrayed. From Ray, suffering through his final days, to Fannie, his spunky hospice nurse, Belle shows she can paint each scene with dramatic details.The only negative about this book was the explicit sex scenes. Sometimes I prefer to leave these pieces of the story to the imagination rather than read the passionate details. Everything else about the book held my attention including the emotions Gia and Jake experienced as well as her siblings. Ultimately, this story is about betrayal and the importance of forgiveness, both for the living and the dying.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. The plot and characters didn't feel real By Alan A. Elsner The protagonist of this unconvincing novel, Gia Andrews, returns to the small town in Eastern Tennessee which she fled in shame 16 years ago when her father was convicted of murdering her stepmother. Gia, now aged 34, has not been back, neither has she ever visited her father. Instead. she has devoted her life as a humanitarian worker, to helping people in African refugee camps and to survive famines and earthquakes. Her return is prompted by her father's release to home custody and hospice. He has cancer and only a short time to live. We're never really told why Gia, who shunned her father in life, would feel compelled to be there for him in his dying days.Gia's older brother and sister have also shunned their father and are reluctant to reconcile even while he is on his deathbed. Both come off as fairly pathetic characters. And townsfolk have camped outside the home shouting slogans through bullhorns to protest his release. (This seemed particularly far-fetched to me. If you examine how people actually behave toward killers - think Boston Marathon, Aurora and Charleston, it is very different.)Interspersed with this narrative is a parallel story describing the final months in the life of the murdered woman, Ella Mae, who has been having an affair with her next door neighbor and on the night of her death told her husband she wants a divorce. In fact, the first chapter of the book is an account of the murder seen through her eyes - although we aren't shown the identity of the killer of course.While trying to come to terms with herself, her siblings and her father, Gia also falls into bed with the hunky owner of the only local eatery. Lust, we're told, soon starts to turn into something more for both of them. Could it be LOVE? And even if it is, does it have a future? Could Gia hang around after the death of her father or will wanderlust take her away from the delicious Jake back to the refugees of the Horn of Africa? And soon, doubts begin emerging about who really killed Ella Mae. Was there a massive miscarriage of justice? Is the killer still lurking?The problem with this book is that nothing about it feels real. The love affair between Gia and Jake doesn't feel real. The characters don't feel real. The lust Ella Mae feels for her lover actually seemed much more authentic than anything that Gia starts feeling for Jake. The author is from Eastern Tennessee but has failed to imbue her book with any real local character or feeling. We don't really feel this little town, its atmosphere, smells, its rhythms. And the plot becomes more and more preposterous as the book goes on. So, unfortunately, although the premise seemed promising, the execution does not live up to it.
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