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Spinning away from them, he strode for the door, reached for the latchstring.
"Killian?" Viloula called out.
He stopped, but didn't turn around. "Yeah?"
"I am sorry."
There was a long pause before he answered. "Don't be. You couldn't have known." Then he pushed through the door and disappeared.
Lainie stared at the closed door for a long time, trying to gather her thoughts. They were swirling around her, sucking her into a rising sense of panic. Soul mates .. . lost loves ... second chances. What did it all mean?
It overwhelmed her. Suddenly she had nothing to believe in, nothing to hang on to. All she'd ever had, since the agony of her childhood, was her own courage and her daughter's goodness. That was all. It had always been enough, but now it was woefully inadequate. She needed something more. She needed . .. faith, and it was the one thing she'd never had.
She sighed, feeling old and inexpressibly tired. As always, she'd have to go on without it. Somehow, she had to find a way back to Kelly, and it didn't matter what she believed in or didn't believe in.
Kelly. As always, the name was enough to calm her. She took a deep breath and thought for a second about her daughter, the love of her life.
Kelly was what mattered, only Kelly.
It was time to cut through the shit. Who cared about soul mates and life choices and chances to solve old
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problems? She had something a lot more pressing to handle right now.
She gave Viloula a steely look, feeling stronger. "So you're saying that Killian is my soul mate, but I don't recognize him or feel anything for him."
"I t'ink you should feel somet'ing for him___"
Lainie nodded curtly. "Yeah, right. The point is, I don't care. I just want to get home."
Viloula frowned. The heavy flesh of her brow pleated. "But you need to be here. Somet'ing happened in de past dat made your future impossible. You have to stay here and solve it to?"
"Solve it?" Lainie threw herself backward in her chair and crossed her arms. "Look, Viloula, I don't need some mumbo-jumbo about realigning my karma or changing the past to help me in the future. I need to get back."
"Back? But you're here. Dere's no going back."
The words drove through Lainie like a knife. She got to her feet and stumbled backward, slamming against the wall. "Don't say that."
Viloula pushed heavily to her feet and moved toward Lainie. She wore a thick flannel shirt and ratty wool pants, hitched tight around her small waist by a fist-wide man's belt. Frowning, she moved toward Lainie. "What is it?"
"I have to go back," Lainie whispered. "It's Kelly."
"What about dis Kelly?"
"She's my daughter."
Viloula stopped dead. "A child?"
Tears gathered in Lainie's eyes again. It was too much for her suddenly, more than she could handle. "My baby," she murmured, hugging herself. "I have to get back to my baby."
Vilo
ula buried her face in her hands. A quiet moan
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escaped her. "Sweet Jesus. Sweet Jesus, a child. A child. None of de books say anyt'ing about getting back to a child."
