When Lightning Strikes

It had all been a dream. She'd never left this house.

"Noooo," she screamed. She wouldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it. Killian had been real. She'd touched him, loved him, let him into her soul.

He had to be real.

If he wasn't real, she was crazy ... too crazy to be a mother, too crazy to be free.. ..

She stumbled out of her chair, spinning away from her desk and hurtling through her house. Panic and fear and desperation pumped through her in heart-stopping bursts of adrenaline. Her fingers shook, her mouth trembled, her heartbeat thundered in her ears. She moved in jerky, awkward motions, searching for something to do, to think, to feel. Anything but this paralyzing sense of terror.

Calm down, Lainie. Get a grip. It was real. It was.

She had to prove it. Had to know for sure. But how?

Judith.

She surged to the phone and yanked the receiver off its hook, punching out Jude's home phone number in New Jersey.

The buzzing drone of a busy signal exploded in her ears.

She slammed the phone back into its cradle. Pacing back and forth across her small, wooden-floored

362

kitchen, she waited exactly ten seconds, then grabbed the phone and dialed again.

This time the phone rang. Judith picked up on the second ring. "Hello?"

Lainie let out a quick breath and tried to sound normal. "Jude?" she said, barely able to hear her own voice over the thudding beat of her heart. Calm down, Lainie. Breathe.

"Lainie, is that you?"

"Yeah, it's me. Jude, I was wondering ... wh-when did I leave New York?"

There was a long silence before Jude answered. "Have you been drinking?"

Lainie laughed sharply, bitterly. "Unfortunately, I'm sober as a judge."

"Thank God," Jude said with a breathy laugh. "Well, you left JFK about ten hours ago. So, with the time change and all, you've been home, what?three hours? Why?"

The answer hit her like a sharp blow to the heart. She reeled backward, her fingers spasmed around the phone. She went from panic to devastation in a heartbeat, and realized a second too late that panicked was better. With panic, there'd been hope. Now, she had nothing, nothing but a yawning, desperate emptiness.

She'd thought she was lonely before she met Killian, but she hadn't known what lonely was until this instant.

"Three hours," she repeated the words in a wooden, lifeless voice. Long enough to make dinner, pour a stiff drink, and talk to Kelly. Exactly what she'd done before she sat down at the computer.

Mumbling good-bye, she set the phone down. Her hands were shaking so badly she missed the phone's

363

cradle. The handset clattered to the floor and emitted a low, whining buzz.

Lainie moved like an automaton through her little house, staring sightlessly past her own belongings. Finally she came to the piano. She trailed a finger along the cool, ivory keys, barely hearing the trilling scale of the music. Photographs cluttered the shiny black surface, framed in dozens of textures and designs. All of them Kelly, all of them smiling.

Memories. The word cut like a knife.

There were no pictures of Killian to hold to her breast at night, no photographs to remind her what she'd felt for him.

She looked up at the ceiling, feeling the sharp sting of tears. Where are you, Killian? What's it like there?