“I’ve booked an appointment with a

“I’ve booked an appointment with a sleep specialist in Seattle,” her mother said gently. “She’s one of the best in her field. We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”
“I’m not sure we’ll have to worry about it for much longer,” Aria replied quietly.
“Why do you say that?” her mother asked, the note of concern in her voice ratcheting up several notches.
“Just a premonition,” Aria mumbled in a barely audible voice.
Melody paused in the act of brushing her silky midnight hair as a sudden chill ran down her spine. She knew her sister’s premonitions had a nasty habit of coming true. Aria had saved her life twice as a result of those fateful premonitions.
Swallowing her sudden nervousness, she finished brushing her hair and moved on to brushing her teeth. It would have been easier to freeze Aria out of her life if her solemn twin wasn’t so sweet. Aria was always the first person to offer comfort to a person in distress. Melody had lost count of how many times Aria had held her in comforting arms as she cried her heart out.
It had been less than a year ago that their mother had revealed they were the product of rape at the age of fifteen. Rather than falling to pieces, Aria had held both Melody and their mother tightly in her arms as Melody sobbed bitterly. Until that moment, their mother had told them their father had left before their birth. Melody had always held out a secret hope that her father had some extraordinary excuse for leaving them and they would be reunited someday.
Discovering how many times her mother had come to the brink of committing suicide after the rape had forever changed her opinion of men. She knew there were good men in the world, but for months after her discovery, she could barely look at men without feeling intense revulsion. The thought of her loving mother being subjected to such brutality had turned her world upside down. She had developed a snide sarcasm that had her spending more time in the principal’s office than she spent in class.