* * *
Emma was coming out of Franklin’s Florist when her cell phone rang. She put the flowers she was carrying on the hood of her car, then answered.
“Hello.”
“Emma, it’s me, Hunt. I need a favor.”
The fact that he was asking was like a gift. She smiled.
“Sure thing. What do you need?” But when he began to explain, she was quickly horrified. “Oh my God! Is she going to be okay?”
“I hope so. I think so. But she’s not conscious, and I’m staying in the hospital with her tonight.”
“Of course,” Emma said. “Where are you now?”
“They moved her to the third floor. Room 300.”
“I’ll be right there,” Emma said. “And it’s okay if the painters have a key? Because if it bothers you, I can easily meet them tomorrow to let them in.”
“No, it will be okay, and thanks. I’ll see you in a bit,” he said, and disconnected.
He headed for the elevator, while Emma grabbed her flowers and jumped in the car. She’d deliver the flowers to the cemetery later. Right now, the living needed her more.
Karen and Larry were in Ava’s room when he walked in.
“Any change?” Hunt asked.
“Her vital signs are all good,” Larry said.
“Then why isn’t she awake?” Hunt asked.
“I don’t know. The doctor said it would happen when she was ready.”
Hunt sighed. That sounded like doctor talk for they didn’t have a clue, but Ava was alive, so he wasn’t going to complain.
“I’m staying with her,” Hunt said.
Karen glanced at Ava and then nodded. “We thought you would. We can stay if you need to—”
“Nothing in my world is more important than her,” Hunt said.
Larry nodded. “Understood. And in ours…but they don’t need all of us up here. We’ll stay a while. You promise to call us if there’s any change?”
“Absolutely,” Hunt said.
“If she wakes up, you tell her we were here,” Karen said.
Hunt nodded.
“And we’ll be back in the morning anyway,” she added.
Hunt hugged her.
“I’m so sorry this happened.”
“You saved her life,” Larry said. “You made the difference.”
Hunt moved to the side of Ava’s bed and slid his hand beneath her palm. Before, she would have clasped it immediately. The limp feel of it against his skin scared him, but Elliot said she would be reborn, and Hunt wanted to believe, so much, that she would wake up and be all that she had been.
Chapter 18
Ava was drifting. She was seeing and feeling and hearing, but in a place she’d never been before. Movement was without effort, like floating, and she was unaware of being in a body.
In this place, she understood.
Everything.
The why of it.
The how of it.
And that there was no end to it.
The beauty of it was beyond description, and the sounds…unexplainable, but mesmerizing…leading her, pulling her along by some invisible rope.
She was curious, and yet there was a sense of having left something undone.
She was surrounded by a blue so pale it almost looked white, and then it began vibrating, and the lights began to change into a thousand different hues of colors she’d never seen.
All of a sudden, there was a bright light before her, and within the light a voice—a voice so beautiful and so loving that she wanted to lie down within the sound of it and just be.
You came too soon. You are not at the end of your path. It is your choice…you can stay…or you can return. Look into the light and choose.
The light grew brighter and wider, and then she saw all that was before her, and the multitudes awaiting her, and it was so beautiful she could not look away.
Then the light flickered, and she was looking down into a room where a woman lay upon a bed. She saw two people standing beside the bed, and then recognized them as her mother and father, holding each other and crying. And then she saw a man holding the hand of the woman in the bed, but she could not see his face.
As Ava began moving closer, a terrible feeling of dread began sweeping through her. There was a familiarity in the long, dark hair strewn across the pillow, then the curve of the woman’s cheek, and then the dark wings of her brows.
She was beside the man now. She could see his face. She knew him. She’d known him forever.
It’s Hunt. And the woman in the bed is me! What’s happening… What’s happening? Why don’t I wake up? No. No. No. I don’t want to die.
And all of a sudden she was back in the body and struggling to find herself within it again. Arms…legs…a heartbeat…pain. Feeling lost. Feeling scared.
Then Hunt’s hand slid beneath her palm and she remembered that. She was willing her fingers to curl around it, but they would not.
She heard his voice, but she could no longer see him.
Hunt! Hunt! Don’t turn me loose. I don’t know how to find my way back yet. Just don’t let me go.
* * *
Good or bad, news always spread fast in Blessings, and this was no exception. Within hours, everyone knew about the Ryman boy trying to elope with the Dillon girl, and about Pete Dillon, the girl’s daddy, chasing them down and wrecking all of them on the two-mile bridge north of town.
Everybody knew about the family brawl that had ensued in the ER after the victims were brought in from the wreck. They knew the Dillon girl had been hurt the worst, and that she’d lost the baby she was carrying, and after that her heart had stopped two times. People said it was because her soul didn’t want to give her baby up. They said it was a mother’s instinct to stay with her child, but that she was finally stabilized enough to take to surgery.
They knew the Dillon boy had a broken arm and a concussion, and that Pete Dillon was released with nothing more than a broken nose.
But it was what Josh Ryman did to Ava Ridley that sent shock and disbelief throughout the community.
It was all over town, and the gossip was spreading.
They said Josh Ryman hit Ava so hard it stopped her heart.
They said she dropped dead on the hospital floor.
And that’s when the storylines began straying from the truth.
According to some stories, Ava’s fiancé, Hunt Knox, had waded through the brawl, laying Dillons and Rymans on the floor to get to her. The fact that there was only one Dillon and one Ryman fighting each other didn’t matter. The story sounded better their way.