Scared To Death (Live to Tell #2)(3)

Instead, somehow, she found peace.

“It’s because you’ve already done your grieving,” her therapist, Joan, told her. “You’re in the final stage now. Acceptance.”

Yes. She accepts that Jeremy is no longer alive, accepts that she is, and—

“Mommy!”

Jeremy isn’t calling you. It’s just a dream. Go back to sleep…

“What’s wrong?” Brett’s voice, not imagined, plucks Elsa from the drowsy descent toward slumber. Her eyelids pop open.

The light is dim; her husband is stirring beside her in bed, calling out to a child who isn’t Jeremy, “What is it? Are you okay?”

“I need Mommy.”

“She’s sleeping. What’s wrong?”

“No, Brett, I’m awake,” she murmurs, sitting up, and calls, “Renny, I’m awake.”

“Mommy, I need you!”

Elsa gets up and feels her way across the room as Brett mumbles something and settles back into the pillows. With a prickle of envy-tinged resentment, she hears him snoring again by the time she reaches the hallway.

It was always this way, back when Jeremy was here to disrupt their wee-hour rest—and when his palpable, tragic absence disrupted it even more. All those sleepless nights…

Brett would make some halfhearted attempt to respond to whatever was going on, then fall immediately back to sleep, leaving Elsa wide awake to cope alone with the matter at hand: a needy child, parental doubt, haunting memories, her own demons.

“Mommy!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Shivering, she makes her way down the hall toward Renny’s bedroom.

The house is chilly. Before bed, Elsa had gone from room to room closing windows that had been open all day, with ninety-degree sunshine falling through the screens. The weather was so glorious that she and Renny had spent the whole day outside, even eating their lunch on a blanket beneath a tree.

Now, however, it feels more like March. Late spring in coastal New England can be so unpredictable.

And yet, Elsa wouldn’t trade it for the more temperate climates where Brett’s work as a nautical engineer transported them in recent years: Virginia Beach, San Diego, Tampa. It’s good to be settled back in the Northeast. This is home.

Especially now that we have Renny.

Technically, she isn’t their daughter yet, but optimistically thinking, it’s only a matter of time and paperwork. As far as Elsa and Brett are concerned, Renata Almeida became Renata Cavalon on the October day she came to live with them.

Or perhaps just Renny Cavalon. Elsa isn’t crazy about the given name bestowed by the abusive birth mother who has since, thank God, signed away her rights.

Renata—it’s so lofty, pretentious, even—better suited to a European princess, or a supermodel, than a cute little girl who looks far younger than her seven years. Elsa and Brett shortened it immediately, with Renny’s blessing. Maybe they’ll make it official on the adoption papers.

Any day now…

Elsa will feel a lot better when the adoption process is behind them and they’re on their way to Disney World for a long-planned celebratory trip with Renny. Until then, with all of them under the close scrutiny of yet another new caseworker—the over-burdened, underpaid agency staff seems to turn over constantly—there’s always the nagging concern that something will go wrong.

No. Nothing can go wrong. I can’t bear to lose another child. I just can’t.

Renny’s bedroom door is ajar, as always. Plagued by claustrophobia, she’s unable to sleep unless it’s open. That’s understandable, considering what she’s been through.

Whenever Elsa allows herself to think of Renny’s past, she feels as though a tremendous fist has clenched her gut. It’s the same sickening dread that used to seize her whenever she imagined the abuse Jeremy had endured—both before he came into their lives, and after he was kidnapped.

But Renny isn’t Jeremy. Everything about her, other than the route she traveled through the foster system and into Elsa’s life, is different.

Well—almost everything. She’s a docile child with a sunny personality, unlike Jeremy—but with her black hair and eyes, Renny resembles Elsa as much as he did. No one would ever doubt a biological connection between mother and child based on looks alone.

Their bond goes much deeper than that, though. From the moment she saw the photo on the agency Web site, Elsa felt a connection to the little girl whose haunted eyes stared out from beneath crooked bangs.

And yet…had she felt the same thing when she first saw Jeremy?

I just don’t know. I can’t remember.

There was a time, not so long ago, when her memory of her son was more vivid than the landscape beyond the window. Now, it’s as if the glass has warped, distorting the view.

Now.

Now…what?

Now that I know Jeremy is dead?

Now that there’s Renny?

Elsa pushes aside a twinge of guilt.

Her daughter’s arrival didn’t erase the memories of her son. Of course not. She’ll never forget Jeremy. But it’s time to move on. Everyone says so: her husband, her therapist, even Mike Fantoni, the private eye who had finally brought the truth to light by identifying Jeremy’s birth mother.

“Why would you want to meet her now?” he’d asked Elsa the last time they’d seen each other, over the winter.