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“Tristan, hold this to her wound, but not too tight, okay?” I say, giving him a firm nod, encouraging him that he can do this.
“Polly, go inside and get me Cynthia’s doctor friend’s number.”
When she hesitates, not wanting to leave her mother, I urge, “Go…her life depends on it.”
Polly wipes away her tears, leaving behind a streak of her mother’s blood on her pale, terrified face, but she does as I ask and bolts inside.
“Cynthia, can you hear me?” I breathlessly ask, hoping to keep the terror from my tone.
After a long moment, her eyes flicker open as she attempts to focus on my voice.
“Mia?” she wheezes, her lungs protesting with every breath she takes.
“Yes, it’s me,” I reply, clutching her deathly cold hand in mine. “You got shot. But you’re going to be okay. I’m going to get you to a hospital, I promise.”
“I’m…dying,” she gasps, bloodied spittle covering her chin.
“No, no, you’re not. You’re going to be fine.”
I can feel Quinn stiffen near me, not as certain as I am of Cynthia’s outcome.
But I need her to stay positive because she will survive. She has to.
“I’ve gotta go now, okay? But I’ll be back real soon.”
“Where…are you going?” she breathlessly asks, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
“I’m going to make you better.” I lean forward, pressing a kiss to her clammy forehead.
Her limp hand rises to caress my head, and in the process, her fingers pass over the comb in my hair. She floppily fingers the jewels, a small smile touching her lips.
“Cara Mia, mine. I’ll be your love till the end of time,” she sings softly, her voice breaking with exhaustion.
“What?” I gasp, pulling out of her grip.
But she doesn’t need to answer because memories so sharp ricochet in my mind, and I almost fall backward with the clarity of them. The universe spirals into a whirlwind of color, and I am no longer in Canada.
Nor am I nineteen years old.
I am being cradled against the breast of a woman who smells of wildflowers and peppermint. Her voice is like an angel’s as she softly sings to me, over and over, “Cara Mia, mine.”
My childlike eyes gaze at the pink unicorns glowing in the dark on the ceiling as my mother sings to me.
My eyes then focus on a comb sitting snugly in her hair. The beautiful black stone glitters in the light, and I reach out with chubby fingers, wanting to touch it.
“One day, it’ll be yours, my darling. I love you, Mia.” She continues humming the song on the radio.
Reality kicks back in, and as I look down at Cynthia, a small smile spreads on her trembling lips.
“You remember.”
With trembling fingers, she reaches for the locket around her neck, attempting to open it. But her bloodied fingers are too slippery, so I reach down and open it for her.
The moment I see what’s inside, my heart is smashed to smithereens, and my eyes fill with heavy, ugly tears.
It’s a picture of me as a baby, sitting in a nursery with soft purple walls. A soft purple I have seen before because I only saw it days ago.
“It now makes sense.” Polly sniffles, standing a few feet away. “She would always go into that room and cry. Sometimes I would hear her sing that song, but most times, she would just cry. I never knew what was inside, but now I know what it was.
