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She stared dumbly at their beautiful faces. “I can’t wait to give you hugs,” she said.
“Are you coming back soon?”
“Yes, love. I’m working hard to get better, and then we’ll all be back at home together.”
“Daddy didn’t come back,” her daughter said.
Their big eyes lowered to shatter her. She read in their faces their fear that she’d been plucked away from them, had disappeared into the vastness of the hospital like their father, would return to them only as memory and ash, a longed-for specter haunting the woods.
“I’m—I’m so sorry to be away from you.”
Her voice was strangled, weak.
This is not about you. They need to know you won’t disappear.
She cleared her throat.
“Remember when we were in the hidden place and I told you I’d come back?”
Their little heads nodded, little faces fastened tight to her through the screen.
“And I did, didn’t I? This is like that. I’m working really hard to get back to you. And then we’ll be together. Okay?”
“For Christmas?” her son asked.
What day is it? What day is Christmas?
Her daughter saw her confusion.
“Christmas is day after tomorrow,” the little girl said. “Mommy isn’t well enough to see us then.”
“Are we going to miss Christmas?” Her son’s face started to break, teetering on the verge of tears.
“Oh, no, honey, we’ll have Christmas! I—I won’t be able to see you. But we’ll have a late Christmas, okay? It will be extra special because you’ll get two Christmases. One with Grampy, one with me, okay?”
“But what about Santa?”
“Don’t you worry about that guy.” She nodded as sagely as her injuries would allow. “If he knows when you’re awake, knows whenyou’ve been good, he certainly knows when your mama’s in the hospital and he has to come a little late, right?”
Her son’s face brightened at this reminder of Santa’s omniscience.
“Okay, Mommy. I—”
A flash of her father-in-law’s chin and cheek appeared, and then the video cut off. She handed the phone back to the sergeant and leaned back on her pillow, dazed.
“He hung up,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Thank you. He would never have—thank you.”
After all that, all that, and you can’t even hold them. This will be their first Christmas without you.
She turned away from the sergeant to hide her tears, wiping them with the corner of herblanket.
25
You up for those questions now?” the sergeant asked.
