Jamie kept trying to get up. It was his job to help, his responsibility. He owed them. They were his to protect.
He flailed about until someone shot him full of morphine and he passed out.
It took minutes before the panic subsided and he remembered that he was on Nantucket. He was surprised that Hallie was in his arms, but she wasn’t the one crying. She was restless, her bare legs moving against his, and she seemed to be trying to say something, but he couldn’t understand her words.
He wondered why she was in bed with him. Had she been telling the truth when she said she was frightened by the ghosts? Damn! he thought. If he didn’t take those blasted pills to help him sleep, he would have heard her. He certainly would have known when she needed help.
“Shhhh,” he said, stroking her hair back. “Be quiet. I’m here and you’re safe.”
“Juliana,” she whispered, her voice fretful. “Juliana has died.”
She was dreaming of the ghosts, he thought, and he held her close to him. Maybe she was right and they should stay at Jared’s big house. Maybe they—
He broke off his thought because there was a flash of lightning outside, and in the quick light he saw a young woman standing by the bed and looking down at them. She was extraordinarily pretty and wore a high-waisted dress that was the color of…What had Dr. Huntley said? Something about a storm. On her dark hair was a white veil. She was a bride.
For an instant, she smiled at Jamie, then nodded, as though telling him she was pleased with the way he was comforting Hallie.
“Juliana?” he whispered and held out his hand toward her. But in the next flash of lightning, she was gone. And with her went all of Hallie’s restlessness, and she grew quiet in his arms.
For a few seconds Jamie was frowning, wondering what he’d just seen, but then a deep sense of calm came over him. For the first time in over a year, his mind filled with something other than the memory of guns and bombs and fear and…and death.
As his body relaxed, he began to see a house. It was two stories, with a deep porch across the front, and to the right was a glassed-in room. He felt himself floating, hovering above the earth, and he could see inside that room. It was off the master bedroom, and he knew Hallie had made it into a nursery. There were two cribs, but one was empty and for a moment, Jamie felt the all-too-familiar sense of panic. But, no, the second crib had two little boys, identical, just as he and Todd were. And just like them, these boys refused to sleep apart.
The vision, the dream, whatever it was, made Jamie feel the best he had since…He couldn’t remember ever having felt so good. He pulled Hallie even closer to him, smiled at the way her legs entwined with his, and fell into a deep and peaceful sleep, the first he’d had in a very long time.
Chapter Ten
“He’s asleep,” came the loud whisper of a little boy.
“I told you he would be,” his sister replied.
“Mom said not to wake him.”
She looked around. “We could knock over that chair, and that wouldn’t be us. Or we could—”
“Who’s she?” asked the boy. He was pointing across Jamie to Hallie’s head, which was barely visible above the covers.
“The exercise lady,” said the girl, trying to sound as though she knew. She was three minutes older than her brother and she took the age difference quite seriously. When she saw a little flicker in Jamie’s closed eyes, she knew he was awake, and she had to resist a giggle of anticipation. “She probably got cold. Jamie is really fat so she’d be warm near him. She—”
“Who is fat?!” Jamie growled, then with a twist pulled them both up into the bed.
The girl threw herself onto Jamie and he began tickling her, but the boy stepped over Hallie and lay down to stare at her.
“Shhhh,” Jamie was saying to his little sister. “Hallie’s trying to sleep. She’s worn out from taking care of me.”
The girl lay still on Jamie’s chest and looked at him with a frown of concentration. “Did you fall on the floor and roll on her?”
A flash of guilt ran through Jamie’s mind. When he’d first returned from the hospital had been the worst. Every noise, every quick movement, every closed-in space had set him off. But then he smiled at his little sister. “Only twice, and you know what? She liked it.”
“If she likes you, she must be crazy,” his sister said seriously.
“I’ll get you for that.” Jamie started tickling her again.
When Hallie began to wake, she thought maybe she was still in her dream. In her mind, there were homemade cakes and champagne that she knew had been brought over from France by one of the Kingsleys. And she could hear children laughing. Smiling, she opened her eyes to see a little boy who looked like Jamie staring at her. He had the most beautiful eyelashes. She smiled back at him.
But then Jamie’s arm landed on her head just in time to keep another child from rolling on top of her. He moved onto his side so his whole body was pressed against Hallie’s back, and she looked into the eyes of the two children who were both fixated on her.
Jamie began nibbling at Hallie’s ear. She was still in such a dream state that she smiled at all of it, for surely none of it could be real.