Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(110)

“My mother,” Lily whispered.

The others exchanged rapid, questioning looks. “Your mother. We never talked about your mother,” Tam said, delicately. “Is she, ah . . .”

“Dead? Yes. Twenty-nine years ago, almost. The day I was born.” Lily couldn’t tear her eyes from the drawing. “She looks about the age she’d have been now. If she’d lived.”

There was a dumbfounded silence.

“You’re sure?” Liv asked.

Lily nodded. “There were pictures of her all over the house. My father was an amateur photographer. She was his favorite subject. I stared at those pictures for hours when I was a kid. But I never saw one where she looked like she was looking at me. Seeing me. Oh, God.” She sniffed, almost angrily. “What is she doing here?” she burst out. “What does she have to do with anything? She never even knew me!”

Tears came down. Lily shoved the sketchbook away. She didn’t want to risk splashing it with tears and smudging such a precious, astonishing thing. She buried her face in her hands. It roared through her, a flash flood of feeling, through a desert that had forgotten what flooding felt like. Grieving for a mother she’d never known seemed senseless, but there was no arguing with feelings that literally knocked her to the floor. The other women gathered around her in a protective cluster of warm bodies, stroking hands on her back, her hair.

“She did, too, know you,” Tam said fiercely.

Lily peered up at her, sniffling. “Huh?”

“Your mother. She knew you perfectly well. And she still does.” Tam grabbed Lily’s hand and laid it on her belly just as the baby inside rolled and flopped. “You think I don’t know this little girl? I know her, and she knows me. But the knowledge is on those other frequencies. The ones we think we can’t tune into, but we can. You just did. You know your mother. Or why would you be crying?”

Lily laughed, soggily. “Oh, stress? Abandonment issues?”

“Stop being a smart-ass,” Edie scolded and gave her a hug that set Lily off again. Then Sveti lunged in. The girl felt as delicate as a baby bird, but her grip was strong. “She wants you to know she’s watching over you. That she loves you,” Sveti whispered. “I am so happy for you.”

Then it was Liv’s turn, with Eamon squirming in between them, grabbing Lily’s hair and trying to climb it, ouch. More hugs. More tears.

It was a long time before Lily could wipe her face and look at the drawing again. With wonder, fear. Something approaching holy awe.

For some reason, it made her heart lighter. Reminded her of a feeling she hadn’t felt since she was young. Breathless wonder.

Tam tilted her chin up and smiled into her eyes. “I’m glad it turned out well for you,” she said. She pated her belly. “Time to feed the fetus. Val said something about osso buco, right? And something tells me that you nonpregnant ladies could all use a glass of red wine.”

Lily let out a watery giggle. “I can’t think about food right now.”

“You will when you smell it, trust me,” Liv informed her.

Edie draped her arm over Lily’s shoulders. They trooped out into the corridor, Lily clutching Edie’s sketchbook. “I feel like I’ve just seen pink and purple for the first time,” Lily told her. “Can I keep it?”

“Oh, God, yes,” Edie said. “It’s yours. Just let me spray some fixative on it so it won’t smear. We’ll get it framed for you, if you like.”

“I would like,” she said, tears welling. “I’ll treasure it forever.”

The other women exchanged delighted glances.

“Well, now,” Liv said softly. “Listen to that. Excellent.”

“To what?” Lily glanced around at them, bewildered.

“Talking about forever,” Edie said. “That’s a very good sign.”

“Forever is a long time,” Tam said, smiling. “Long enough for children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren.”

“They’ll pass that picture down through the generations,” Liv said. “They’ll tell the story of their ancestress, contacting her mother across the void between life and death, and invoking her protection.”

Fanciful, but she liked the sound of it. The feeling inside her was so strange. It took a while to pin a name to it. She couldn’t be sure.

But maybe it was hope.





24


The coffee was stone cold, and so was he. Bruno spat out the bitter liquid, wiped his mouth. He could hear it on the airwaves, the other men si





lently wondering how to break it to him about the point of diminishing returns. He took a bite of the peanut butter and chocolate–flavored energy bar, but the lump of soy protein and corn syrup just sat there in his mouth, dry and inert. He was too damn tired to chew.

He stared down at the unbeautiful fruits of their labors. Three skeletons, laid on a tarp, their bones more or less in order, since Kev of course knew the position of every bone in the human skeleton, of which there were hundreds. Kev also had some sixth sense that allowed him to distinguish a muddy, rodent-gnawed metatarsal from a twig or a rock. The fingers on the corpses’ right hands, of course, were not there. Tony had chopped them off, sent them to the Ranieris. Clothes had long since rotted away. They’d searched the earth around each torso, combing through every pebble, every grain of sand. No locket.