She kicked off her shoes, turned on her heels, and headed back down the stairs.
“Now, wait a minute, Harley,” Randall called. “We still have a great story. We caught one of the Bradshaws stealing from his brothers.”
“Give me a freaking break,” the woman said, tearing the hat from her head and tossing it in his direction. The hair flew with it, landing with a skittering slide at his feet. “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m leaving. You can keep the wig. I hate it.”
“I offered to pay for you to get your hair bleached,” he called as she stomped down the rest of the stairs.
“Take your money and shove it where the sun don’t shine,” she replied, walking outside and slamming the door.
“I don’t think she’s happy with her potential for upward mobility in the job,” Clementine said between sneezes. “Maybe you should think about that the next time you hire someone, Randall.”
“Your observational skills are keen. I’ve got a job available in investigative reporting if you’re interested,” Randall responded, lifting the camera and pointing it in her direction.
“Don’t,” Porter warned.
“What? Women love to see their faces in the news.”
“I’d rather see mine on a wanted flyer at the post office,” Clementine managed to gasp between sneezes.
Her eyes were watering. Her nose was red.
And somehow she still made Porter smile.
“Is that supposed to be a joke?” Randall asked.
“Just a statement of fact,” she replied. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’d better get out of here before I sneeze my head off. Literally.” She jogged downstairs, and Porter followed.
“What’s in the box?” Randall asked as they reached the front door and stepped outside. “Money that your dad had hidden away? I’ve heard he was quite the miser. Didn’t like to spend any of his hard-earned cash. Didn’t trust banks. People say he has hundreds of thousands of dollars hidden in the walls of this house.”
“People are stupid,” Porter said, and Clementine laughed, the sound harsh and raspy.
Randall didn’t seem amused.
“There’s a little truth to most stories, Porter, and if you’ve got money you’re trying to steal from your brothers, I’m going to have to call the police.”
“Call them,” he said, because he wasn’t going to stand on the front porch of his father’s house arguing. He also wasn’t going to tell Randall what was in the box. The contents were no one’s business but his own.
“Fine. I will.” Randall took out his phone and hurried across the yard, his face a pale oval in the darkness, his mustache shimmering in the streetlight.
“It’s glitter,” Clementine wheezed, the words ending on a harsh cough.
“What?” he asked, worried about the wheeze, the cough, the tightness in her voice.
“He glitters his mustache. I noticed it the other day. Who does that?” She coughed. Sneezed. Coughed again.
“Clementine. Are you okay?” he asked.
“Dandy,” she said, the words raspy, her voice tighter.
“Later we’ll have to talk about your definition of that word. Right now, we’re going to the hospital.”
“Don’t be silly. I’m allergic to dust mites. They’re probably all over that house,” she said. “I’ll be fine. I just need my inhaler.” She dug in her purse, frowned. “I guess I left it at home.”
“Do you actually have one?” he asked, his stomach churning with the same sickening feeling he had every time he walked into Sunday’s rehab room. Worry. Fear. Helplessness. The desperate need to do something.
“Yes. At least, I did. I haven’t had to use it in months.”
“We’ll get one at the hospital.” He took her arm, urged her down the porch stairs, his heart beating with a different kind of fear than what he’d felt when Randall burst into the house.
“I don’t need to go to the hospital.”
“I hate to agree with a thief,” Randall said, striding toward them. “But Porter is right. You do.”
“He’s not a thief,” she argued, the words barely audible, her lips a dusky shade of blue.
“We need an ambulance,” Porter said, urging her out of her coat, tossing the dust-covered wool onto the ground, hoping to remove some of the allergens that were closing her airways.
“I already called for one,” Randall responded, an unlikely ally in the fight to get Clementine to the hospital.
“I don’t need an ambulance,” she responded, a hint of doubt in her voice.
That worried Porter as much as her gasping breath and blue-tinged lips.
“What’s going on?” Randall’s former employee called, stepping out from behind an overgrown bush, a cigarette in her hand. “Is she okay?”
“You’ve got an EpiPen, Harley, right? For your bee allergy?” Randall asked.
“Geez, yeah,” she responded, dropping her cigarette and running toward them.
“Is she anaphylactic? Are you?” she asked, touching Clementine’s forehead.
“Not that I know of,” Clementine croaked, her voice nearly gone, her eyes swollen, her breath wheezy, raspy, and way too quick.
She was struggling, her eyes glassy, her face pallid, slipping away while they all stood around watching.
“Get out the pen,” Porter barked.
“Okay. Okay.” Harley pulled a box out of her purse.
“Have you ever used one before?” Porter asked, his hand on Clementine’s back. He could feel the quick, tight rise and fall of her shoulders as she struggled to breathe.
“Only on an orange at the doctor’s office,” Harley said, the sound of sirens nearly drowning out her words.
“Maybe it isn’t a good idea,” Randall murmured. “If you do it wrong, you could be sued. The ambulance will be here any minute and—”
“Shut up, Randall,” Harley said, the EpiPen out of the box and held tight in her trembling hand. “I just need to take off the cap.”
“One of my nieces uses an EpiPen. I can do it,” Clementine said, the words strangled and soft, her movements swift as she grabbed the device and flipped open one end. She slammed it into her thigh, holding it there as she continued to gasp for breath.
“Five, six, seven, eight,” Harley counted out loud.
“This isn’t a dance, Harley,” Randall snapped.
“Nine, ten. Done,” she finished.
Clementine nodded, pulling the pen away and trying to smile.
“That should do it,” she gasped, and then she crumbled, her hair puddling onto overgrown grass as she fell.
Porter caught her, the shoe box falling as he lowered her the rest of the way to the ground.
Her eyes were closed, her lips blue.
She was still and silent and less animated than Porter had ever imagined she could be.
“Is she breathing?” Randall asked, lifting the camera as if he thought he’d take a picture.
“Yes, but you won’t be if you snap a photo,” Porter responded, resting his hand on Clementine’s sternum. She was breathing. Shallowly, air whistling through her constricted airways.
“Should we try rescue breathing?” Harley asked, kneeling beside him, her finger probing Clementine’s neck, searching for her carotid artery.
“Not if the air isn’t going to get through,” he responded, worried that the EpiPen hadn’t worked, that she’d stop breathing, that the ambulance would arrive too late.
“There’s the ambulance,” Randall cried, pointing to the corner of the street and the vehicle that was speeding toward them. “I’ll wave them in.”
He sprinted toward the road.
Porter stayed where he was. Hand still on Clementine, his body humming with adrenaline and fear and worry. Everything inside him, everything he was, willing her to keep breathing.
God, if only wanting something were enough to make it happen! Matt would be alive. Sunday would be healed. The kids would be back in the sweet em
brace of their nuclear family. And he’d be in LA. Doing his job. With no idea that Clementine existed.
He frowned, his hand resting just over her heart. He could feel it thumping frantically, skittering in her chest like a wild colt. Her muscles were taut. Shoulders. Pectorals. Neck. He’d have tried to knead the tension from them, but he was afraid if he lifted his hand, her heart would stop, her breathing would cease, and she’d be gone.
“Are you trying to clear my chakra?” she gasped, her eyes still closed.
“Your what?” he asked, not because he hadn’t heard her. Because he wanted to keep her talking. If she was talking, she was breathing. If she was breathing, she was alive.
And alive was a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
“My chakra, because if you are, don’t bother. My mother attempts it every time we’re together, and it hasn’t worked yet. All I really need is to get the rest of the dust mites out of my lungs.” She hadn’t opened her eyes, but he thought her breathing was easing, the effort to inhale and exhale less labored.
“Your mother tries to clear your chakra?”
“She’s a yogi. Very into energy healing and a little disappointed that I haven’t followed in her footsteps. Not that she’d ever admit it.” She coughed, and he could feel it rattling deep in her chest.
“I’d like to meet your mother.”
“Why? You need your chakra cleared?” she asked, her muscles relaxing. He could feel that the same way he could feel her breath deepening, her frantic heartbeat slowing. Everything in her softening.
“I want to understand a little more about where you come from,” he responded.
“You don’t have to meet my mom to understand that. I come from the heart. That’s almost always my motivating force,” she replied.
“And when it isn’t?”
“Probably a place of loyalty. It’s my Achilles heel. As evidenced by my ten-year marriage to Sim.” She sighed. “Oh well. At least I can say I always have good intentions. Although, we all know where those lead.”
“It’s been more wittily than charitably said that hell is paved with good intentions; they have their place in heaven, too,” he quoted.
“Robert Southey?”
“That’s right.”
“Should I assume that you’re into English poetry?”
“I was into a girl in high school who was. I memorized enough to impress her for two semesters of high school English, but she went to the prom with Ryan Miller.”
She smiled. Just like he’d hoped she would.
He could have said more.
He could have told her that he hadn’t attended senior prom, that he hadn’t even wanted to. By the time his peers were dressing in their tuxes and sneaking alcohol into the prom venue, he’d already graduated and was in boot camp in Florida.
Yeah. He could have said a lot. Maybe he would have. To keep her talking and alert. But the EMTs were running toward her, telling him to back off so they could work, putting an oxygen mask on her face, and lifting her onto a gurney.
She said something.
He wasn’t sure what.
Too much noise, too much activity. One minute she was lying on the ground with three medics tending to her. The next, she was being carried away, her dark hair spilling over the side of the gurney and trailing through the dead leaves that littered the yard.
He waited until the ambulance pulled away, and then grabbed the shoe box, sprinted back to the diner, jumped into his SUV, and headed for the hospital.
Chapter Six
Clementine was dancing. Whirling through the house, her long skirt sweeping across dark wood floors, photos and paintings and textiles going in and out of focus as she moved to the rhythm of a slow minuet. Candlelight or firelight or fairy lights shimmered in the corners of the room.
She didn’t know which.
She didn’t care.
Because she was there, twirling through color and texture and life. Laughing as she stared into silvery blue eyes, leaned into a broad chest and strong arms. Breathless. Dizzy. Excited. Because he was there. She was. Pressed close to one another. That was all that mattered.
He was all that mattered.
The one-in-a-million love. The kind that wasn’t supposed to happen but when it did, always lasted.
Always.
Because it was meant to be.
Like dandelions in bright green lawns.
Like crickets at the end of summer.
Like sunrise and sunset and oceans’ ebb and flow.
Like mother cats and their babies curled up in front of crackling fires.
“Is she dead?” someone whispered. A boy from the sound of it.
She looked around, trying to find him.
But the minuet had ended, and she was alone, standing in Porter’s pitch-black room.
“Don’t be an idiot. Do you think we’d be allowed in here if she were?” someone else hissed.
“Don’t call me an idiot!” the boy shouted.
“Shhhhhh,” a little girl said. “I can’t wake her up if you’re yelling.”
“You’re not going to wake her up. She’s dead. Just like Dad. They only let us come to the hospital to see her because you were crying so much. After we go, they’re going to pack her in a coffin and bury her in the ground.”
“Shut up, dweeb!”
“Shhhhh!” the little girl said again. “I need to concentrate.”
Cool palms pressed against Clementine’s cheeks. Warm breath fanned her face. She smelled bubble gum and grape soda and tried desperately to open her eyes, but she was trapped somewhere between dreams and consciousness and she couldn’t break free.
“This is when it’s going to happen,” the little girl intoned. “I’m going to will my energy into her. Every last bit of it. Just like in that book I got from the library where the boy is dying and his friend puts hands on him and gives him her energy, and he lives. Only I’m not going to die like she did. I’m going to live in the shadow land of dreams and find Mom there and bring her back home.”
She took a deep breath, and Clementine could swear she felt something. Not just the inhalation of breath. The expulsion of power, drifting through cool palms and warm skin, sliding through sluggish blood, drifting languidly to her heart in quick, bright pulses of energy.
Her eyes flew open.
She was in a bed.
In a hospital.
Bright light above her blocked by Moisey Bradshaw’s face.
The little girl’s eyes were squeezed shut, her hands still resting on Clementine’s face. Behind her the other Bradshaw children huddled together, standing tensely at the foot of the bed, their gazes focused on their sister.
“Don’t miss me too much when I’m gone,” Moisey murmured, her afro glittering with dozens of firefly clips. “And don’t let them bury me even though it might look like I’m dead, because I’ll only be wandering through dreams.”
“I don’t think your mother would want you to do that, sweetie,” Clementine said. “The dreamworld can be a dangerous place for mortals.”
Moisey’s eyes opened, and for a split second Clementine thought she could see straight into the little girl’s fiery soul.
“I did it,” Moisey breathed, her hands smoothing Clementine’s hair, patting her cheeks, tugging a blanket up under her chin.
“I did it!” she repeated, turning to her siblings, her arms stretched wide in joyful celebration, a bright pink bandage wrapped around her right index finger.
“No, you didn’t,” Heavenly said bluntly, Oya balanced on her scrawny hip. She glanced at Clementine. “Did she?”
“Well,” she hesitated, not wanting to crush Moisey’s spirit or destroy her dreams, but not wanting to say something that wasn’t absolutely the truth. Sure, she’d thought she’d felt something—little zips of energy that could have been anything or nothing—but she’d also been on the verge of waking up before Moisey touched her.
“I did!” Moisey broke in excitedly. “
And now I’m going to do the same with Mom!”
She darted for the door, but Clementine managed to snag her sweater and yank her back to the bed.
“Not so fast, hun. You can’t wander around without an adult.” She stood carefully, still holding onto Moisey, testing her legs, because she remembered the dusty floor, the struggle for breath, her muscles giving out.
Porter.
Quoting poetry and saying he wanted to meet her mother.
Which should have been an easy thing to brush off or ignore or even agree to, but Clementine had had to go and get philosophical about things.
I come from the heart?!
She’d sounded like her mother. On steroids. After spending three months in a naturalist commune.
She scowled, pulling the cannula from her nose and grabbing her purse from a table beside the bed. She remembered part of the ambulance ride to the hospital. She remembered being given another shot of epinephrine. She remembered hearing something about twenty-four-hour observation.
But she didn’t remember falling asleep.
She sure as heck didn’t remember agreeing to have all six of the Bradshaw kids dropped off in her room. Heavenly, Oya, Milo, Maddox, Twila, and Moisey. They were all there, eyeing her as suspiciously as she was eyeing them.
She’d been their babysitter plenty of times before the whole baby Miracle thing. She knew how often and how easily they could find trouble.
She also knew how big their hearts were, how deeply they loved, and how lost they must be without their mother.
She opened her arms and four of the six walked into them.
Heavenly, of course, stayed back.
She was the newest member of the family, the oldest, and the most reluctant to let her feelings show. She was also the most likely to keep the others in line. Despite her desire to come off as tough, gruff, and rebellious, she had a strong desire to be part of a family.
“I’m a little afraid to ask how you all got here,” Clementine said, kissing each of the kids on the top of the head before stepping away.
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