Night Road

She was on her way to see Scot Jacobs.

Twenty-one

Jude was in the emergency ward of Seattle Hope. She lay in a narrow bed, connected to all kinds of monitors and machines and alarms, but it was all unnecessary. She hadn’t had a heart attack.

She looked up at her husband, feeling foolishly fragile. She’d broken so easily, again. “I thought all of that was behind me. ”

He stroked the sweat-dampened hair away from her face. “So did I. ”

“A panic attack. ” She practically spit the words out.

Grace climbed up the metal bed rails. She slipped and plopped back to the floor, then climbed up again. The rattling clang reverberated through Jude’s tense body, made a headache blossom at the base of her skull. “What’s panic?” Grace asked, banging her chin against the bed rail.

“It means you’re scared,” Miles said.

“I saw a beach rat once. It was scary,” Grace said. “And those big hairy black spiders are scary. Did one crawl up your leg?”

“Nana’s really tired, Gracie,” Miles said. “Why don’t you read that book over there for a minute?”

“But I wanna know what scared Nana. ”

“Not now, Gracie. Okay?” he said gently.

“Is it like when I had chicken pox and I just wanted sleep?”

“Exactly. ”

“Okay, Papa. ” Grace slid down the side of the bed and shuffled over to the chair in the corner and sat down. She opened a tattered copy of The Cat in the Hat and tried to sound out the words.

Jude felt bad—shaky, headachy, sick to her stomach. “I’m losing it, Miles. ”

“What do you mean?”

She loved the strong, steady movement of his hand through her hair. It calmed her more than any medication could. “I thought I saw her. ”

“Mia?” he whispered.

“No. ” Jude couldn’t help feeling disappointed by the question. She’d tried to see Mia. Neither psychics nor prayers had worked. And certainly, seeing Mia wouldn’t cause Jude to think she was having heart failure. The opposite would be true: such a vision would restart her heart.

She glanced sideways, saw that Grace was absorbed by the challenge of reading. “Lexi,” Jude whispered. It was the first time she’d said the name aloud in years. “She was talking to Gracie. ”

Miles took her hand in his. He didn’t look at all ruffled by her admission, and his calm soothed her. “It’s common to experience dreamlike sensations or perceptual distortions during a panic attack. You know that. Remember the time you thought a car was going to hit Grace? If I hadn’t been there, you would have killed yourself running into traffic. ”

“This wasn’t like that,” Jude said, but even as she said it, she questioned herself. So many weird things had happened to her since Mia’s death. “Her hair was short and curly. And she was really thin. ”

“It wasn’t Lexi,” Miles said evenly. She loved how certain he sounded. Sometimes Miles’s certainty made Jude want to gouge his eyes out, but now she wanted to share his calm.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Her sentence was up in November. Remember how tense we all were, waiting to see if she would show up here?”

Tense was an understatement. Jude had spent the end of last year strung tighter than a trip wire. It wasn’t until mid-January that she had begun to relax. Miles had wanted to call the state and track Lexi’s movements, but Jude had been adamant about no contact whatsoever. She hadn’t wanted anyone in their family to even say Lexi’s name aloud, let alone find out where she’d gone.

“She didn’t show. Didn’t call or send a note. And she sent Zach’s letters back unopened,” Miles said reassuringly. “Lexi made her decision. She thinks G-R-A-C-E is better off without her. ”

“You sound as if you disagree. ”

“I’ve always disagreed. You know that. ”