Free The Last Sunday by Terry E. Hill Page A

room.”
    â€œTell her I’m tired. I’ll talk to her later.”
    At seventeen, Jasmine was the adolescent version of her mother. Her beautiful, flowing, satiny hair had been trained and pampered from a young age to never need artificial lengthening. Despite the fact that she had lived for years in the fast lane, her skin was flawless.
    Her life had been what little girls’ dreams were made of. She had known only the most elite private schools, had traveled around the world with tutors at the ready, and received a white convertible BMW 650 with a sable interior, wrapped with a red velvet bow, on her sixteenth birthday. Jasmine partied with her celebrity contemporaries, the children of movie stars, and trust-fund babies in New York, San Francisco, Milan, and Paris. There was neither day nor night in her world. There was no destination in the world that either a private jet or a first-class airline ticket would not take her and her friends to party and to shop. The world was her playground.
    There would be days when neither Samantha nor Hezekiah knew where she was. And then a call would come.
    â€œMommy, it’s me.”
    â€œWhere are you, Jasmine?” would be her mother’s distracted reply.
    â€œI’m in the Hamptons, at a party,” Jasmine explained on one particular occasion.
    â€œYou didn’t tell me you were leaving the city. What party?”
    â€œIt’s a release party for Beyoncé’s new album.”
    â€œI need you home tomorrow afternoon. Your father and I are doing the promo for the new broadcast, and you need to be in a few of the shots.”
    â€œMother! The party is for the whole weekend. Everybody’s here. I can’t just leave. I should have never called you.”
    â€œI don’t care who’s there. I need you here tomorrow. I’ll arrange for the plane to pick you up at the airport first thing in the morning. My assistant will call you with the time.”
    â€œCan’t the pictures just be of you and Daddy this time? I don’t want to leave.”
    â€œDon’t argue with me, young lady,” Samantha said angrily, now giving the conversation her full attention. “I will see you tomorrow.”
    There was silence on the line as Samantha waited for a response. She could hear music and laughter in the background.
    â€œJasmine, is that understood?”
    â€œYes,” came the huffy reply.
    â€œAnd, Jasmine.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œStay out of the newspapers please.”
    On the day her father was murdered, Jasmine took an overdose of sleeping pills. Her stomach was pumped, and she was shipped off to a drug rehabilitation facility in Arizona. She spent twenty-eight days listening to the children of the rich spew the pathetic details of their drug-addled lives onto the terra-cotta-tiled floor of the group therapy room. And now she was home. More angry and alone than ever before.
    Don’t you think you should at least go in and say hello to your mother?” Etta asked as Jasmine walked past her to the staircase.
    Without turning around or altering her stride, she replied curtly, “I said I’ll talk to her later. Please have someone bring my bags up.”
    Her bedroom suite was the size of a three-bedroom apartment. It had a private marbled bath with a Jacuzzi tub and gold fixtures, a book-lined study, a walk-in closet dripping from ceiling to floor with clothes and accessories from the trendiest designers, and a king-size bed strewn with stuffed animals and antique dolls and flanked by freshly cut flowers in crystal vases, which were mysteriously replaced every Monday afternoon.
    When Jasmine entered the suite, she immediately felt like a trapped little bird in a luxurious gilded cage.
    There was a tap on the door, accompanied by, “Jasmine, honey, it’s Mommy.”
    â€œCome in,” came the exasperated reply.
    Samantha entered with a smile and outstretched arms. “Welcome