A Gift of Time (Tassamara) (31 page)

“Hope you don’t mind,” Colin said, unsmiling, his eyes intent. “Kenzi wanted to see you.”

“Not at all.” Natalya turned her palm up, holding her hand out to the little girl. She came forward, tugging Colin along with her. “How are you, Kenzi? I mean Mac.”

“I like Kenzi,” the little girl said, voice soft. She set her doll down on the bed next to Natalya’s hip, propping her up carefully, not looking at Natalya. “I want to be Kenzi.”

“Yes,” Natalya said in quiet agreement, feeling a warm contentment entirely at odds with the pain and misery messages her body was sending her. She already knew that, of course, but Kenzi deserved the chance to say it.

“Kenzi’s talking now,” Colin pointed out needlessly.

Natalya smiled at him. She knew enough about the future that she would have liked to laugh, but it would hurt far too much.

“My mama said it was okay,” Kenzi replied. Natalya saw Colin flinch, his hand tightening on Kenzi’s. The little girl looked up at him. “She did,” she insisted.

“I know.” Colin forced a smile. “It’s all right.”

“The nurse says I’m wrong.” Kenzi’s lower lip slid out. “My mama is gone now. The nurse says I didn’t talk to her, but I did. She said I could talk now and not to hide any more and she told me good-bye. And she said she was sorry and she loved me and she’d see me again soon, but not too soon.” Kenzi paused for a response, but when it wasn’t forthcoming, she added insistently, “She said. She did.”

“Yes,” Natalya said, keeping her voice soothing. “She did.”

“You believe me?” The lower lip slid in and Kenzi’s eyes narrowed. For the first time she looked straight at Natalya. “He said it was a dream.” She tilted her head toward Colin.

“Mmm,” Natalya murmured noncommittally. The hospital wasn’t in Tassamara, and Colin was used to pretending, for the outside world, that reality was what outsiders expected it to be. She suspected he knew it was no dream.

“Do you know what a Wookie is?” Kenzi went on. “Because I didn’t but my brothers did. And it’s like a bear. A really big bear. I’m not a bear. But maybe I’ll be really big someday. I don’t want brown fur, though. Maybe white fur.”

Natalya’s lips twitched. “That would be nice.” She was fading in and out, just a little bit, her memories and reality and the pain, the pain, all mixing together. “Feathers would be good, too. Maybe blue ones? Or purple ones?”

“Or pink ones,” Kenzi agreed. “I like pink. But not all pink, sometimes I like orange, too. And yellow, but not with crayons, yellow crayons don’t work right. They don’t have the right shine. But I liked the yellow with your funny chalks.”

“That’s a good yellow, isn’t it?” Natalya agreed.

Kenzi rubbed one foot along the back of her other leg. Her eyelashes dropped and she stared at the bed. “Will I get to use your chalks again?”

“Yes,” Natalya answered without hesitation. She moved to push herself up on the bed but stopped, grimacing with the pain radiating through her. She leaned back again much more carefully. “Yes, you will.”

Kenzi shot her a sideways glance. “I was really sick, but I’m all better now. I’m supposed to go home soon.”

“I’m sorry you were sick.” Sudden tears pricked at Natalya’s eyes. Kenzi hadn’t been sick. She’d poured so much of her energy into keeping Natalya alive her own systems began to shut down. They were going to have to be very careful with her gift in the future. Little injuries—skinned knees, minor burns, sprained ankles—those were okay. But she needed to learn to protect herself. And then Natalya realized she was answering the wrong question. “Max is taking care of it.”

Kenzi’s forehead furrowed with puzzlement, but it was Colin who asked, “Taking care of what?”

Natalya flicked her fingers dismissively. “Whatever needs to be done.” She closed her eyes and concentrated on breathing for a moment. Her last dose of morphine must be wearing off. The pain was gnawing at her chest, digging into her bones.

She opened her eyes again. Kenzi and Colin wore identically worried looks.

“Sorry,” Natalya exhaled the word, not wanting to take the deep inhalations that would force her chest to expand. She tried to smile at Kenzi as she said, pausing between sentences to take shallow breaths, “My dad will work with Carla. Remember her? Until I get out of the hospital, you’ll go stay with him and Grace.”

Kenzi dropped Colin’s hand. Her smile lit up her face. Oh, Natalya thought blearily, she was going to be a gorgeous teenager. And that first boyfriend—that asshole would break her heart. She’d have to make sure Colin didn’t learn about it until much later or that kid would wind up with more traffic tickets than was strictly fair.

Kenzi took her hand. Natalya felt the small fingers gripping hers. And then the energy, the soothing warmth, like sunlight reaching into her, stroking up her arm, gently cushioning the pain. For a second, or maybe ten, Natalya didn’t resist, but then she pulled her hand away.

She felt—not great, not good, but too much better. “None of that,” she said firmly, softening the words with a smile. “No need to rush. You’ll like staying with Max and Grace.” But the pain was better, enough so that she lifted herself up, leaning away from the pillows to pick up the doll and stroke its hair.

“I think Colin wants to talk to me now,” she said, handing the doll to Kenzi. “Is Grace out in the hallway?”

“Uh-huh,” Kenzi answered eagerly. “Lots of people are. Grace, and the lady who’s going to have a baby and gets confused a lot and talks to invisible people, and the daddy, and some other people, too. They’re all waiting to see you, but the nurse says only one person at a time. Except me and him, we got to come in together, because I was supposed to go somewhere, but they didn’t know where. And the confused lady, she has to have a rose hold her hand, except she doesn’t have any flowers and it doesn’t make sense.”

Natalya met Colin’s eyes and she could see her own amusement reflected in his. Kenzi was making up for lost time.

“You go wait with them,” he told Kenzi. He waited until she was out of the room and sat down in the chair next to Natalya's bed. It was a recliner, the type of big, ugly plastic chair hundreds of worried relatives had probably slept in over the years, but he perched on its edge, leaning forward and looking uncomfortable.

“Nat,” he started.

“Police business first,” she told him. “You’ve got Travis in jail, right?”

“Isolated, because of his age,” Colin agreed. “Thompson’s alive, but not talking. Or not saying anything coherent, anyway.”

“No surprise.” She stretched her shoulders back. She should have stopped Kenzi sooner. She felt so much better. She still hurt, but it was more like an intensely painful bruise than the cracked sternum she was sure she had. “How soon can you get him out?”

“Uh, that’s not gonna be so easy,” Colin answered. “Best we can tell, he shot two people.”

“With one bullet?” Natalya let sarcasm creep into her tone. “It was self-defense. Or rather, my defense. Thompson was trying to kill me, to strangle me, while suffering a psychotic episode caused by severe bipolar 1 disorder. Travis shot to save my life. He couldn’t have known the bullet would go straight through Thompson and into me.”

“Still…” Colin protested.

Natalya tilted her head to one side and smiled at him sweetly. It wasn’t that she didn’t respect his position, but she wanted to get through this discussion and on to the next, far more entertaining conversation they were going to have. “Get him out. Or I’m going to sic my dad’s lawyers on you.”

Colin groaned. “Not Bill Piero.”

“Who else?” Natalya spread her hands. “Where are the other boys?”

“All in the group home over by Sweet Springs.”

Natalya nodded. They might not be happy there, but she’d take care of that as soon as she could.

“I need to get a statement from you. Can you answer a few questions?”

She shook her head. “Our police business is done,” she said, head still tilted, voice still amused. “Try again.”

“Nat.” Her name was a guttural moan. Colin closed his eyes. “You…”

“Don’t start there,” she interrupted him. He opened his eyes and looked at her. She gazed into them and the pain of her chest meant nothing. “You were wrong,” she told him.

He buried his face in his hands, and maybe he was laughing and maybe he was crying, but his voice was muffled as he agreed, “I was so wrong.”

“I was right,” she said.

“You were right,” he agreed, lifting his head.

“Can I say it?” she asked wickedly.

“Say it.”

“I told you so!”

He laughed, and then his expression darkened. “Nat,” he said again, and this time she waited. “I wanted you to move on. I wanted you to have the life you should have had. I wanted you to get married and have kids and be an artist and live… happily ever after. And I knew you couldn’t do that with me, because I was going to die. But I didn’t know…”

“That I couldn’t do it without you, either?” she prompted him, her voice so gentle.

“You were dying,” he said, his expression bleak. “You were…”

“Bleeding out,” she told him briskly. “Gunshot penetrating the right ventricular cavity, chance of survival, uh, about nil. Maybe ten percent if the hospital is close enough, but it wasn’t.”

Colin rubbed a hand over his face. “That makes me feel better,” he admitted.

“Because of Kenzi?” she asked him.

“If I realized what could happen, I would never have put her into that helicopter. You’re the love of my life, Nat—the only one for me, now or ever—but Kenzi nearly died trying to save you. When I found out they had to resuscitate her and you were in surgery, in critical condition, and they weren’t sure you were going to make it, I thought I’d killed her for nothing.” He took her hand, his strong fingers folding around hers.

“If you could have seen the future, you would have done exactly what you did,” Natalya reassured him.

“Does that mean…” He shot her a quizzical look.

“My precognition is back.” She tried to look serious, but she couldn’t stop the smile playing around her lips.

His own smile started slow. “And?” he asked. “Are you going to tell me?”

“My future—our future—looks great.”

“Does that mean you forgive me?”

Natalya raised her free hand and touched the bandages over her heart and the tubes coming out of her chest. “I shouldn’t have survived this. That I did—it’s a gift. I’m not going to waste it.”

“Oh, Nat.” Colin stood. Moving carefully around her IV and wires, he sat on the bed next to her and slid his hand along her cheek and around to the back of her neck. Leaning forward, he gently kissed her, his lips soft against hers.

She kissed him back, harder, fiercer, leaning into him, wanting to press against him, to feel his warmth against her, until a jolt of pain reminded her of where they were and why.

He caught the wince and pulled away. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Life hurts sometimes,” she said simply, but she settled back against her pillows again. She could wait. They had time. “Are you going to ask?”

He blinked in momentary surprise, and then took her hand again. With solemn eyes and a serious face, he started, “Natalya Latimer, will you—”

“Not that,” she interrupted him, pulling her hand away and putting it up in laughing protest. “I’m not wearing a hospital gown when I get proposed to.”

He looked puzzled for a moment and then his expression cleared. “Oh, that. I already know.”

She kept her face straight. “Oh, really? So which are we having first, a boy or a girl?”

“Girl, of course,” he said promptly, grinning at her.

She shook her head at him, eyes innocent.

“No? But—” His head turned toward the door and the little girl waiting outside it.

“The twins are already available for adoption,” she told him. “Their paperwork goes through much faster than hers.”

His mouth opened and closed and opened again, before he finally closed it firmly, swallowed hard, and said, “Okay.”

Laughing would have hurt too much, so she opened her arms to him and beckoned him close for a gentle kiss. She’d let him find out the rest in time, the way most people did.

But she knew already that they would fill the house on Lake Elsinore with children, pets, love and laughter.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”

Mary’s smile didn’t change, and her gaze didn’t waver from Kenzi, who was leaning on Grace’s knees, the two of them with heads together, talking intently about something Rose couldn’t hear. “It’s all right.”

“Not really,” Rose said sadly. “If I’d realized you were still alive, I could have brought Kenzi here days ago. You wouldn’t have died.”

“I might have died anyway.” Mary shrugged. “And she might be dead with me. It’s better this way.”

Rose pressed her lips together to stop the words from escaping, but she wanted to respond with heated protests. It was not better. It was not right. Kenzi needed her mother.

Mary must have felt her reaction, because her head turned and she looked at Rose. They were sitting, side by side, in a crowded waiting room. Rose sat next to Akira, so she could whisper in her ear about who not to talk to. Akira sometimes didn’t notice ghosts weren’t living. It made life awkward for her.

“You helped me so much,” Mary said. “You saved my daughter. I’m so grateful. There are no words.”

“But you could have lived, too,” Rose insisted.

Mary turned her hands up. “I got to say goodbye to my mother when she came to the hospital. I got to see my father and know he’s getting help, whether he likes it or not. I know the boys are safer, even if they won’t be together the way they wanted. I don’t have any regrets.”

“They took you off life support just before we got here,” Rose tried. “If we’d been a little faster…”

Mary looked calm, serene, as different from the anguished ghost Rose had encountered a week ago as night and day. “I’m ready to go.” She tilted her head toward her shoulder. “My door’s been waiting for me for a week.”

Rose shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

Smiling shyly, her cheeks pink, Mary said, “Well, my father would tell you about heaven. No sickness, no death, no tears, an eternal perfection. But I’m hoping Dumbledore got it right.”