Into the Dim (Into the Dim, #1)(99)

Chapter 49


I PERCHED ON THE EDGE OF MY MOTHER’S HOSPITAL BED, my baby sister a warm lump in my arms. While machines beeped quietly around us, I inhaled the baby’s scent. Fresh-baked cookies and newness.

I still couldn’t believe it. I had a sister.

“She’s really beautiful, Mom.”

“I know.” My mother was beginning to get a bit of color back in her wan cheeks after three days in the hospital.

Misty morning light poured in through the window as the baby stretched out a tiny hand, as though grasping at a dream. She gripped my finger with surprising strength. A wrinkle of concern appeared below the pink-and-white knitted cap. I smiled, recognizing Moira’s handiwork.

“Lucinda has contacted your father,” Mom said. “All she told him was that you were ill. He’ll be on the next plane out. He knows nothing about me.” Her gaze flicked to the baby. “Or her. He—he’s coming alone.”

I looked away. So she knew about Stella. In my mind, I saw my dad standing next to the quiet, thoughtful librarian. He and Stella shared roots in the same small-town world, and I honestly didn’t know what he would do. Dad was a scientist. His life revolved around test tubes and logic. I knew he’d loved my mother, but hadn’t recent events proved that sometimes love wasn’t enough?

“Hope,” she said, “I want you to know that I’m going to tell your father everything. He deserves that. But . . . well”—she pressed her lips together to still the trembling—“I think we both know how that will likely go. I’ve never been fair to Matt, keeping him in the dark this way. In the end, I just want him to be happy. And if he’s found happiness with Stella, I won’t contest it. I hope you understand.”

The baby let out a squawk when I squeezed her too tight. Her little-old-man features blurred as I nodded.

“Here.” My mother held out her arms. “Let me have her.”

I handed her back, then tied my own blue and white hospital gown tighter around me. I’d been admitted for observation the day before, the concussion I’d received still making my head buzz and throb like a nest of angry wasps.

After the baby was settled, Mom smoothed a finger absently down one downy cheek. “I wanted to tell you so many times about . . . everything.”

My mind flipped to a snowy forest. To the image of an angel holding me in her arms, and a horrifying journey that my young mind had locked away.

“You were so sickly when you were small,” she went on. “Fragile. You caught every illness imaginable, due to your lack of natural antibodies for this time. So I kept you close, thinking it the right way to protect you. Yet I prepared you, as best I could, in case the day ever came. I—I should’ve never kept this from you. Any of it. I’m sorry.”

I reached out to squeeze her hand and felt one of the hundred cracks in my shattered heart begin to mend itself. A slender thread of forgiveness wove itself between us. It was tenuous, but definitely a beginning.

When a nurse entered and began fussing with my mother’s IV lines and telling me to head back to my own room for a vital sign check, I stood. “Well, I guess I’d better—”

“I’ve decided on a name,” Mom blurted out.

Guilt stabbed me when I realized I hadn’t thought to ask. “Really? What?”

“Eleanor.” The name whispered through the room, coating me in memory. “Her name is Eleanor.”

“I think”—my breath hitched—“I think that’s perfect, Mom.”

As I reached for the door handle, Mom’s voice rose over the beeping. “Bran came to see me before he was transferred,” she called. “He wanted to see you, but you were sedated.”

I knew Bran was long gone. Transferred by Celia to another hospital within hours of our arrival. No one knew where. I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

My knuckles whitened on the handle. “He could have waited.”

“He didn’t have a choice, honey,” she said. “He explained about his brother. And even with that, I think it was a difficult decision for him.”

I looked back over my shoulder at the tiny bundle in my mother’s arms. What would I sacrifice to keep her safe?

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess it was.”





“We were sore worried.” Phoebe lay curled next to me on the starched hospital sheets. “When you and Bran just popped in like that.”

I nodded, though the motion made my head hurt. Still, it was nothing compared with the sharp throb in my chest, as if my heart had been scooped out and replaced with a tangled ball of needles.

“I was down in the watch room,” Doug, his bulk perched awkwardly on a tiny rolling stool, explained, “when suddenly every line on the monitors turned red. That’s when I knew you must’ve found the Nonius Stone. It was the only explanation. I flew down and powered up the machines. There was this enormous blast that rocked the whole house. Then the two of you just . . . appeared.”

The glance that passed between him and Collum set my teeth on edge. “What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

Collum still looked washed out after minor surgery to repair the damage to his arm. He’d be in a sling for a few weeks, but the doctors thought there would be no permanent damage.