Loreena's Gift
Page 33
“Is that how it feels? Like they’re made of stone?”
Crossing her arms over his, Loreena tried to bring up the visual memory of the statue she had seen so many years ago, when she, Saul, and their mother had come to visit during the summer. “I used to think so,” she said. “I used to talk to her here, thinking she could hear me. Uncle always said my mother watched over us, and I talked to her, too, but this statue…it was something I could touch, something that was always nearby. I felt closer to her than anything real.”
“You were so young when you came here. That statue would have seemed large, protective.”
She nodded. “Yes, just like that.” Pausing, she turned toward him. “But now…”
“It’s just a statue.”
Loreena put her gloves back on. Somewhere on the church lawn, young girls started singing, a song about Monday morning and how it was all they hoped it would be. “Everyone is vanishing,” she said, “and once they’re gone, they never come back. One day Uncle will be gone, too, and you.”
He turned her around to face him.
“Even with everything I’ve seen, I don’t know any more than anyone does. Not really. I don’t know what lies beyond, if Ben is still gardening, or Russell still rowing.” If Dirk ever outran the fanged demons, she thought, or Javier ever got off the stage. If Frank ever stopped stabbing his brother. Or Saul…she took a ragged breath.
Dominic pressed her palms against his cheeks. “It’s all right, you know,” he said. “All of it, in the end. You’ve shown me that.”
He held on, using her hands to frame his face. She pictured them there, his dark eyes between them. Her cursed hands, as she had so often thought of them. They’d taken her places no one had ever gone before, places she herself would have never wanted to go. But they’d also brought peace to some people, an end to pain, and, for her brother, a well-deserved rest after a battle long fought. In Dominic’s eyes, they’d given him new life, a chance to start over again.
“Uncle says it’s just brain fog,” she said, pulling her hands away, “the last glimmers of consciousness producing the images I see.”
He let one hand go but kept hold of the other. “Then how do you explain the rose?”
One of the nurses could have left it. Another visitor, perhaps. It might have been lost under the sheet. They could have overlooked it. Visitors brought flowers to hospital patients all the time. Yet she had carried the rose home and pressed it between the pages of one of her favorite books, and since then she had sniffed it many times. The scent seemed resistant to fading, as delicious this morning as it had been when she stood on the grass with Saul, looking into his eyes for the last time.
Dominic took hold of her shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s Sunday, and we’re going to lunch at your favorite café. You can order a cheeseburger and a piece of cherry pie—”
She shook her head vigorously.
He hesitated. “Okay. No pie. Just the cheeseburger. And I can watch you pour ketchup in a perfect dollop on your plate, and we can talk about music and horses and what we might do tomorrow. For you and I, Loreena, we have a tomorrow. Don’t we?”
Her brows furrowed as she considered his words, and then she felt the warmth of his skin near hers as he bent his head and kissed her. Locked in his embrace, she wrapped her arms around his neck, her eyes closed as she lost herself in the sensation of his lips against hers, their world twirling around in her head, a mix of the tunnel and the meadow and the café and the cabin and all through it the miracle that one day he had arrived at the church, listened to her play, and asked her for an interview. Why he had come no longer mattered. He had come, and for some strange reason, after accompanying her on the most horrid of nightmares, he was still there. Now she was back home, safe, and he was with her, and together with Uncle Don, they were all going out to lunch on the first snow day of the season, the faintest echoes of the church bell still lingering in the radiant sky.
Acknowledgments
My sincere gratitude to:
Pat Walsh, for believing in Loreena’s Gift and shepherding the book to its best publishing home. I’m forever grateful.
My editors, Guy Intoci, Dawn Raffel, and Michelle Dotter. I’m grateful for your insights and guidance in making the book the best it could be. And to all the staff at Dzanc Books for your dedicated work.
The National Federation of the Blind, and the impressive people I met while assisting with the annual national convention so many years ago.
Danny Lyon and his book, The Bikeriders, through which I found inspiration for some of the characters in the outlaw biker gangs.
My family, Mary, Gerald, Jim, Nathan, and Ryan, for your unwavering support and love. I’m so grateful to be sharing this journey with all of you.
Most of all to my mother, Mary, in whose eyes I saw Loreena come to life in a way I could never have imagined. Thank you for believing in me.
COLLEEN M. STORY is a longtime freelance writer, editor, and ghostwriter, and author of Rise of the Sidenah, a 2015 North American Book Awards winner. Her short stories and poems have been published in Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mother’s Soul, Country Extra, Nostalgia, and more. Her health articles have appeared in online and print magazines like Women’s Health, Healthline, Renegade Health, and 4Health magazine, and she maintains a robust inspirational blog for creatives at Writing and Wellness. She lives in Idaho.