Lucidity

Chapter 8 - From the Mouths of Babes

“That’s enough for now,” Grace whispered, gently moving Alex’s head from her arm. He was snoring, soft corduroy rasps that echoed through the room.

“What happens to Grace?” the girls asked, swirling around her as she escorted them from the room and closed the door behind them. “I’ll bet she and Jimmy live happily ever after.”

Jimmy smiled at that and blew Grace a kiss before vanishing. Grace rubbed her wedding ring, still warm from his hand.

“Maybe,” she said, trying hard not to allow sorrow enter her voice.

“Would you like to come to our tea party?” one of the girls asked.

“Brittany, no grownups allowed.”

Brittany grabbed Grace’s hand. “Grace isn’t grown up. She’s just like us, aren’t you, Grace?”

“We want to hear more. Please?” The girls pulled and tugged until Grace found herself seated at the miniature table in the playroom, her knees bumping as she perched in a child-sized chair.

“I’m Tiffany,” said the girl who had originally protested Grace’s invitation. Obviously the leader. “This is Brittany,” she pointed to the ebony skinned girl. “And Heather.” The last girl, the one who rarely spoke, nodded shyly at Grace.

“I’m Grace.”

The girls giggled in unison. “We know, silly.”

Grace blinked, then remembered Brittany using her name earlier. How had they known who she was?

“What happened?” Tiffany asked as she poured pretend-tea for them all. “Were you scared? Down there in the dark, all alone—”

“Except for moldy old Maeve,” Brittany put in. “I’ll bet it was kind of fun. What happened next was totally up to you—”

“But it wasn’t,” Heather finished in her quiet voice. The rest nodded their agreement. Grace was surprised at their understanding. They were only eight or nine years old at most. But she guessed if they were here receiving intensive chemo, then they probably did have some idea of what it felt like to face mortality.

Free and yet terribly bound to fate at the same time.

Tell them, Jimmy urged, reappearing across the room, leaning against the glass wall. A nurse looked in, through Jimmy’s transparent image, and Tiffany smiled at her.

Or was she smiling at Jimmy? Grace wondered with a chill, facing these three bald, young but much-too-old girls.

“Go ahead,” Tiffany said, delicately sipping at her tea, her pinky extended. “Tell us what happened next.”

Of course she couldn’t tell them everything that happened after she discovered Maeve’s tomb—the blood, the pain, the terror.

But she could tell them the happy parts—and they had been happy, hadn’t they? Jimmy smiled at her and nodded his encouragement.

Grace took a deep breath before beginning, trying to bottle up all the emotions that talking about their first meeting stirred up. She felt ancient now. Yet back then, only a few short years ago, she had felt hopelessly young, anxious to face life on her terms and prove herself.

Fool. She remembered falling, careening off the sheer wall. This time she had bounced off several rocks and into the water. She came up shrieking for air, retching against the volume of water she’d inadvertently swallowed. The water was now high enough that the only way to keep her head above it was to tread vigorously. But at least it had stopped rising.