He smiled and took her hand, and it was then that she knew. Beyond all doubt, beyond reason, she simply knew.
Tears welled in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, but she smiled through them as she clung to her son's hand, lifted it to her lips, brushed a gentle kiss across his knuckles. This was her son, and his name was Alban.
"Ah," the woman said softly. "I see."
Drea didn't know what the woman saw, and in that moment didn't care. After all these years of empty pain, she was holding her son's hand and looking into his eyes and seeing the spirit that had once resided, however briefly, in her baby's tiny form. This form wasn't the one her baby would have had, these features weren't what he would have grown into, but the essential part of the person...yes, this was her child, who had lived after all, just in another existence.
"She loved me," Alban said, still smiling that perfect, radiant smile. "I could feel it, and you see how pure it was. When I was leaving her and coming back home, she tried to save me by offering her life in exchange."
"That shit never works," said the undertaker, in the weary, slightly cynical, but sympathetic tone of someone who had seen the same heartbreaking scene played out many times, always with the same result.
"Gregory!" said the woman in a tone that was both amused and an admonishment. To Drea she explained, "He hasn't been here all that long, this time, so he-"
"Still remembers a lot," Drea finished for her. She couldn't help smiling, because Alban was smiling and holding her hand, and no matter what happened now everything was okay.
"She meant it," said Alban, and he duplicated her action of a moment before, taking her hand to his lips and lightly kissing her fingers. "She was a child herself, just fifteen, but she loved me enough to sacrifice herself to save me. That is why I brought her here, because though there has been a lot of darkness in her life, there has also been love of the purest kind, and that deserves a second chance. I stand as witness."
"I say yea," said a blond woman, tall and willowy. "There was love, she wears it still. I stand as witness."
"And I," said a man. His layers said that he'd endured a lot, that his previous body had been bent with a painful deformity that had confined him to a wheelchair for most of his life, but here he was tall and strong and straight. "I stand as witness."
Of the eleven people surrounding her, three thought there was no point in giving her a second chance, but even those three were free of any sense of malice. They simply thought she didn't belong there. She didn't resent them, because there was no room for resentment here even though there was evidently room for disagreement.
The woman stood there for a moment, her face lifted slightly to the sky, her eyes half closed as if she were listening to some song only she could hear. Then she smiled and turned to Drea. "Your mother-love, the purest form of love, has saved you," she said. She touched Drea's hand, the hand that still clung to Alban's hand. "You've earned a second chance," she said. "Now return, and don't waste it."
THE MEDIC WAS packing up his bag because there was nothing he could do, nothing that could have been done even if he'd been there when the accident happened. Blue and red and yellow lights strobed the highway above, while blindingly bright emergency lights had been rigged to shine down on the car. People were talking, radios were crackling, and the rumble of the wrecker's engine gave a bass underlay to all the other sounds. Still, he heard something strange, something that made him stop and cock his head, listening.
"What?" asked his partner, pausing too, and looking around.
"I thought I heard something."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Like...sort of like this." He demonstrated, taking a quick, shallow breath of air through his mouth.
"With all this noise, you heard something like that?"
"Yeah. Wait, there it was again. Didn't you hear it?"
"Nope, not a thing."
Frustrated, the medic looked around. He knew he'd heard something, twice, but what. It was coming from his left, from the direction of the wrecked car. Maybe a branch had finally snapped under the strain, or something.
They had covered the woman's body with a blanket, draping it over her as best they could, given the fact that she was pinned to the seat with a damn tree through her chest. God, this one was bad. He tried not to let it get to him, but he knew this was one he wouldn't forget. He didn't want to look at the pitiful sight again, but, damn it, there was that sound for a third time and it was coming from that direction, for sure.
He stood, leaning closer to the wreckage, straining to hear. Yes, there it was. He heard it-and he saw the blanket move, as if the fabric was being sucked in a little, then blown out.
He froze, so astonished he literally couldn't move for two long, very long seconds. "Shit!" he said explosively, when he could move again, when he could speak, and he whipped the blanket back from her face.
"What?" asked his partner again, leaping to his feet in alarm.
It was impossible. It was fucking impossible. Still, he pressed his fingers to the side of her neck, feeling for a pulse. And it was there, though he'd have sworn on his life that there hadn't been one just minutes ago, but now he could feel the beat of life under his fingers, faint and rapid, but there.
"She's alive!" he yelled. "God! Get a chopper in here! We got a live one!"
Chapter Eighteen
SHE SWAM IN AND OUT OF CONSCIOUSNESS. SHE PREFERRED "out," because then she wasn't aware of the pain. The pain was a bitch. It was the biggest bitch she'd ever tackled, and most of the time it kicked her ass. There were times, when the drugs were either wearing off enough to let her think but still keep the pain somewhat at bay, or when the drugs were taking hold with exactly the same result, when she knew that this was the price she had to pay for that second chance. There was no magic healing, no easy trip back to the land of the living. She had to grin and bear it, though there was no grinning and an awful lot of bearing.