I tried to hold on, to keep us bound together, but the Dim ripped him away as I twirled end over end, tumbling and whipping like a leaf in a hurricane. I felt each cell as it tore apart, one microscopic particle at a time.
I landed hard on my shoulder and hip, rolling over and over until my head bounced against stone. My brain imploded in agony, and nausea rolled through me. I forced my eyelids open, but something was wrong. Everything was bleary, as though I was peering through the water of a murky fishbowl.
I can’t see.
My lips refused to form words. My mind was sluggish, my muscles as weak as water.
“Bran,” I croaked.
No answer. I tried to scrub at my eyes, but lightning bolts of electricity jolted over my nerve endings like my entire body had gone to sleep. My ears felt stuffed with cotton. “Someone! Anyone! Please!”
Muffled noise. Footsteps pounding across stone.
“Bran!” I screamed his name with everything I had left.
A familiar hand grabbed mine. Scalding fingertips traced my cheek for an instant before his hoarse voice croaked, “I’m here.”
My head fell back in relief, and the indistinct world around me faded to black.
Chapter 49
I PERCHED ON THE EDGE OF MY MOTHER’S HOSPITAL BED, my baby sister a warm lump in my arms. While machines beeped quietly around us, I inhaled the baby’s scent. Fresh-baked cookies and newness.
I still couldn’t believe it. I had a sister.
“She’s really beautiful, Mom.”
“I know.” My mother was beginning to get a bit of color back in her wan cheeks after three days in the hospital.
Misty morning light poured in through the window as the baby stretched out a tiny hand, as though grasping at a dream. She gripped my finger with surprising strength. A wrinkle of concern appeared below the pink-and-white knitted cap. I smiled, recognizing Moira’s handiwork.
“Lucinda has contacted your father,” Mom said. “All she told him was that you were ill. He’ll be on the next plane out. He knows nothing about me.” Her gaze flicked to the baby. “Or her. He—he’s coming alone.”
I looked away. So she knew about Stella. In my mind, I saw my dad standing next to the quiet, thoughtful librarian. He and Stella shared roots in the same small-town world, and I honestly didn’t know what he would do. Dad was a scientist. His life revolved around test tubes and logic. I knew he’d loved my mother, but hadn’t recent events proved that sometimes love wasn’t enough?
“Hope,” she said, “I want you to know that I’m going to tell your father everything. He deserves that. But . . . well”—she pressed her lips together to still the trembling—“I think we both know how that will likely go. I’ve never been fair to Matt, keeping him in the dark this way. In the end, I just want him to be happy. And if he’s found happiness with Stella, I won’t contest it. I hope you understand.”
The baby let out a squawk when I squeezed her too tight. Her little-old-man features blurred as I nodded.
“Here.” My mother held out her arms. “Let me have her.”
I handed her back, then tied my own blue and white hospital gown tighter around me. I’d been admitted for observation the day before, the concussion I’d received still making my head buzz and throb like a nest of angry wasps.
After the baby was settled, Mom smoothed a finger absently down one downy cheek. “I wanted to tell you so many times about . . . everything.”
My mind flipped to a snowy forest. To the image of an angel holding me in her arms, and a horrifying journey that my young mind had locked away.
“You were so sickly when you were small,” she went on. “Fragile. You caught every illness imaginable, due to your lack of natural antibodies for this time. So I kept you close, thinking it the right way to protect you. Yet I prepared you, as best I could, in case the day ever came. I—I should’ve never kept this from you. Any of it. I’m sorry.”
I reached out to squeeze her hand and felt one of the hundred cracks in my shattered heart begin to mend itself. A slender thread of forgiveness wove itself between us. It was tenuous, but definitely a beginning.
When a nurse entered and began fussing with my mother’s IV lines and telling me to head back to my own room for a vital sign check, I stood. “Well, I guess I’d better—”
“I’ve decided on a name,” Mom blurted out.
Guilt stabbed me when I realized I hadn’t thought to ask. “Really? What?”
“Eleanor.” The name whispered through the room, coating me in memory. “Her name is Eleanor.”
“I think”—my breath hitched—“I think that’s perfect, Mom.”
As I reached for the door handle, Mom’s voice rose over the beeping. “Bran came to see me before he was transferred,” she called. “He wanted to see you, but you were sedated.”
I knew Bran was long gone. Transferred by Celia to another hospital within hours of our arrival. No one knew where. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
My knuckles whitened on the handle. “He could have waited.”
“He didn’t have a choice, honey,” she said. “He explained about his brother. And even with that, I think it was a difficult decision for him.”