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Jacey moved closer to the bed and leaned over her mother. “Happy anniversary, Mom. ” She reached out a shaking hand and brushed a lock of hair from Mikaela’s face. “Can you believe it has been ten years since we married Liam?”
She turned and smiled at him, and in that instant, she was six years old again, a gap-toothed first grader who’d fallen off the jungle gym and sprained her finger. He ached to make everything better for her, but no amount of colored Band-Aids or knock-knock jokes would make her smile now.
“How is she today?”
“The same. ”
Jacey swiped a finger along the side of the cake, drawing up a big glob of pink frosting. She held it beneath Mikaela’s nose. “Can you smell the cake, Mom? It’s Suzie’s best vanilla cream, with real Grand Marnier in the frosting. Just the way you liked … like it. ”
The tiny fissure in her voice was almost more than Liam could bear. “Here, pull up a chair. How was school today?”
Jacey tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear. “Good. I aced the math test. ”
“Of course you did. ”
She looked at him, then turned away. He noticed the quick, nervous way she bit down on her lip—a trait she’d inherited from her mother.
“What’s the matter, Jace?”
It was a minute before she answered. “The winter dance is coming up. Mark asked me if I wanted to go. ”
“You know it’s okay. Whatever you want to do is fine. ”
“I know, but …”
He turned to her. “But what?”
She wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Mom and I talked a lot about this dance. We were going to go into Bellingham to get a dress. She …” Her voice snagged on emotion and fell to a whisper. “She said she’d never been to a prom, and she wanted me to look like a princess. ”
Liam couldn’t imagine his beautiful wife sitting at home on prom night. How come he didn’t know that about her? It was another of his wife’s many secrets. “Come on, Jace. It’ll break her heart if she finds out you didn’t go. ”
“No fair, Dad. ” She looked away, then, very softly, she said, “If she wakes up. ”
Liam wanted, just once, to hold Jacey and say, I’m scared, too. What if this is it … or what if she wakes up and doesn’t know us … or if she never wakes up at all? But those were his fears, and it was his job to keep the lights on for his family.
“Jacey, your mother is going to wake up. We have to keep believing that. She needs us to keep believing. This is no time to go soft on her. We’re a family of warriors, and we don’t run from a fight. Do we?”
“It’s getting … harder. ”
“It wouldn’t be called a test of faith if it were easy. ”
She looked at him. “I heard you last night. You were talking to Grandma about Mom. You said no one knew why she didn’t wake up. After Grandma left, I saw you go to the piano. I was going to say something, then I heard you crying. ”
“Oh. ” He sagged forward in his chair. There was no point in lying to her. It had been a bad night, the kind where his armor felt as if it were crafted of cellophane. Remembering their anniversary had done him in. He’d sat at the elegant Steinway in the living room, aching to play again, needing to recapture the music that had once lived inside him. But ever since the accident, he’d been empty; the music that had sustained him through so much of his life had simply vanished. Though he’d never said so to Jacey, she knew; perhaps she’d noticed even before he had. The house that once had been filled with Bach and Beethoven and Mozart was as silent these days as a hospital room.
Music had always been his release. In the Bronx, when he’d felt as if he was losing his soul, he’d played angry, pounding music that screamed that the world was unfair, and in the bleak days while his father was fading into a stranger, he’d played quiet, elegiac melodies that reminded him of the sweetness of life, of the fullness of promises made. But now, when he needed that solace most of all, there was only this aching emptiness inside him.
He gave Jacey the only truth he could. “Sometimes it catches up with me and grabs so hard I can’t remember how to breathe. I sort of … fall through the floorboards of my fear, but I always land here, at her bedside, holding her hand and loving her. ”
Jacey looked at Liam with a sadness that wouldn’t have been possible just a few short weeks ago. “I want to tell her I’m sorry for all the times she looked sad and I didn’t care. ”
“She loves you and Bret with all her heart and soul, Jacey. You know that. And when she wakes up, she’s going to want to see those dance photos. If you don’t go, we’ll be eating macaroni and cheese out of a box for months. No one can hold a grudge like your mother. ” He smiled gently. “Now, I may not know much about shopping for girl stuff in Bellingham, but I know about style because Mike has bucketloads. Remember the dress your mom wore to the Policemen’s Ball last year? She went all the way to Seattle for that dress, and to be honest, it cost more than my first car. You’d look perfect in it. ”
“The Richard Tyler. I forgot all about it. ”
“She wore it with that pretty sparkly clip in her hair. You could do that. Grandma could help you. Or maybe Gertrude at the Sunny and Shear salon could help. I know I’m not as good at this as your mom, but—”
Jacey threw her arms around him. “She couldn’t have done any better, Daddy. Honest. ”
