“Mia?” he whispered.
“No.” Jude couldn’t help feeling disappointed by the question. She’d tried to see Mia. Neither psychics nor prayers had worked. And certainly, seeing Mia wouldn’t cause Jude to think she was having heart failure. The opposite would be true: such a vision would restart her heart.
She glanced sideways, saw that Grace was absorbed by the challenge of reading. “Lexi,” Jude whispered. It was the first time she’d said the name aloud in years. “She was talking to Gracie.”
Miles took her hand in his. He didn’t look at all ruffled by her admission, and his calm soothed her. “It’s common to experience dreamlike sensations or perceptual distortions during a panic attack. You know that. Remember the time you thought a car was going to hit Grace? If I hadn’t been there, you would have killed yourself running into traffic.”
“This wasn’t like that,” Jude said, but even as she said it, she questioned herself. So many weird things had happened to her since Mia’s death. “Her hair was short and curly. And she was really thin.”
“It wasn’t Lexi,” Miles said evenly. She loved how certain he sounded. Sometimes Miles’s certainty made Jude want to gouge his eyes out, but now she wanted to share his calm.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Her sentence was up in November. Remember how tense we all were, waiting to see if she would show up here?”
Tense was an understatement. Jude had spent the end of last year strung tighter than a trip wire. It wasn’t until mid-January that she had begun to relax. Miles had wanted to call the state and track Lexi’s movements, but Jude had been adamant about no contact whatsoever. She hadn’t wanted anyone in their family to even say Lexi’s name aloud, let alone find out where she’d gone.
“She didn’t show. Didn’t call or send a note. And she sent Zach’s letters back unopened,” Miles said reassuringly. “Lexi made her decision. She thinks G-R-A-C-E is better off without her.”
“You sound as if you disagree.”
“I’ve always disagreed. You know that.”
Grace looked up. “Did you just spell my name, Papa?”
Miles smiled tightly at his granddaughter. “I was testing you. Good job, Poppet.”
Grace beamed at him. “I’m the best speller in my class. I’m getting a trophy for it.”
“She’s not coming back, Jude,” Miles said softly, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “All of that is behind us.”
*
Grace loved hospitals. They were grownup places, and because her Papa was a surgun—or something like that—people brought her books and juice boxes and gave her paper and crayons. Sometimes, when a doctor wanted to be alone with Nana and Papa, one of the nurses would even take her for a walk through the busy hallways. Her favorite was seeing the newborn babies in the see-through plastic boxes. She loved their tiny pink and blue caps.
Even so, after a few hours, she was bored. Ariel was hiding; she hadn’t come to Grace’s wrist mirror since the playhouse, and Grace’s hand was hurting from coloring so many pictures.
She was about to whine—again—when the door to Nana’s room burst open. Dad rushed in, carrying a huge stack of books under one arm. “How is she?” he asked Papa.
“I’m fine,” Nana said. She smiled, but it looked sorta flat. Like she was tired. “You two don’t need to go into doc speak. I had a panic attack that felt a hell of a lot like a heart attack. They’re discharging me now. It’s embarrassing, really.”
Dad put his books down on the chair beside Grace. Ruffling her hair, he moved past her and went to the bedside. “Panic attack? You haven’t had one of those in years. Not since—”
Nana held up a shaking hand. “We all know the history.”
“She thought she saw Lexi,” Papa said.
Daddy drew in a sharp breath.
This was news. Nana had a reason, and the reason had a name. Grace scrambled up the metal bed rails again and hung on. “Who’s Lexi?”