The Savage Grace: A Dark Divine Novel(65)

Daniel, my father, Charity, Baby James, Brent, Ryan, Zach, Slade, and even Talbot were gathered around, dishing up heaping portions from platters piled high with all varieties of breakfast foods that filled every square inch of the table.

“She’s up!” Dad said when he saw me in the entryway.

The crowd at the table cheered.

“Come eat.” Dad waved me into the room.

Both Daniel and Talbot stood when I entered, but it was Daniel who rushed over and threw his arms around my shoulders. He pecked a kiss on my cheek. “How are you feeling? You passed out at the hospital.”

“Tired but starving.” My stomach hadn’t stopped growling since I’d laid eyes on all that food.

“Sit. Eat.” Daniel indicated the empty seat between his spot and Charity. I watched as my sister passed a pitcher of orange juice to tattoo-covered Slade. Little Baby James squealed with delight as he pelted Talbot in the face with a handful of scrambled eggs. Talbot laughed, swatting egg off his baseball cap.

I pinched my arm. Hard. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do if you think you’re dreaming? My two worlds—the Urbat, and my human family—had finally collided. But instead of the resulting explosion I had expected if that were ever to happen, they were breaking bread together? “What on earth is going on?”

From behind me came the last voice I had expected to hear. “Breakfast for dinner.”

I whirled around to find my mother standing there, holding a tray of steaming French toast. My mouth popped open. How was she here?

“Your favorite,” she said. “I was hoping the smell would rouse you.” I noticed now that her fingers were still quite thin, but other than that, she looked so different from the vacant shell I’d seen when I’d visited her on Monday.

“Mom? But … but…” Fleeting memories trickled into my brain. Daniel and me standing over my mother as she lay in her hospital bed in the psych ward. The feeling of power rushing through my hands. Then I recalled passing out with fatigue onto the hard linoleum floor. “How long have I been asleep?”

“About ten hours,” Daniel said. “I’ve never seen anyone so drained. I don’t think you’re supposed heal two people in one day like that. So don’t go getting ideas that you can go around healing whole wards of people at the hospital at once.”

My cheeks flushed with heat. I had been thinking something like that.

“How are you so okay?” I asked Daniel. He’d been part of both healing sessions, too.

“I slept for a good four hours myself once we got back here. But Grace, you should realize that most of the power came from you. I was just helping. You’re the one who healed your parents.”

“We hear you’re quite the little miracle worker,” Talbot said, his mouth full of egg.

I turned back to my mom and threw my arms around her neck, almost sending the tray of French toast flying. I kissed her cheek.

“I heard what you said,” she whispered into my ear. “When you came to see me a few days ago. You said you needed a mother. That you all did. I know I can’t try to be perfect anymore, but I’m trying my best to be what you need.” I noticed now that even though her hair was washed and cleaned, it hung straight and unstyled around her shoulders, and she wore wrinkled slacks and a blouse under Dad’s kiss the cook apron. Several slices of the French toast on the tray were browner than my mother would have usually deemed “acceptable” in the past, and that made my heart feel lighter.

She wasn’t perfect, but she was Mom.

“Now go eat,” Mom said, shooing us to our seats with an awesomely motherly tone. “Build up your strength.”

“So where’s Aunt Carol?” I asked as I headed for my seat. I realized I’d been gone all day and all night without calling her. I was expecting to get quite the earful about it.

“She left already,” Dad said. “Carol was a little … overwhelmed by our return. Miracles are harder for some people to process.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she started claiming you faked the accident just to get a couple days off,” Mom said. I’d never heard her talk so jovially about her sister.

“That’ll go over well with Grandma.” I sat at the table, and the others passed platter after platter of food in my direction. I shoveled chocolate-chip pancakes, eggs, bacon, and slice after slice of French toast into my mouth—filling up the empty pit that had been in my stomach for days.

In fact, the only one—at a table populated with almost all teenage boys—who ate more than me was Slade; he inhaled his food with the fervor of a death-row inmate granted his last supper.

Charity giggled next to me, and I was afraid it was directed at my lack of eating manners, but then I realized she’d locked eyes with Ryan, who sat directly across from her. A wide, goofy grin spread across his face. I picked up a banana-nut muffin and chucked it at him. It bounced off his forehead and landed in an almost-empty plate of bacon. But it had been just the trick to wipe that puppy-dog look off his face. He blinked at me.

“Don’t. Even. Think. About. It.” I picked up a second muffin and held it like a baseball about to be thrown.

“I wasn’t … I mean, I was … But, um … your sister is cute …,” Ryan sputtered, and wiped at the little particles of muffin that clung to his forehead like a bull’s-eye.