Gone With the Witch (29 page)

In the old-fashioned kitchen, waiting on Becky's high chair tray sat a bowl of d
ry
Froot Loops and a sippy cup of
chocolate milk. With her tiny baby hand, Becky lifted a red
loop and showed it to him.

"Loops," Aiden said. "I see."

"Red," Becky said and offered it to him.

"For me?" he asked, and when she nodded, he was so
touched, he bent down and let her force it between his lips,
which made her laugh. He couldn't believe he'd not only accepted a limp Froot Loop, but he was eating it with joy,
as if she'd given him a great gift. "Thank you, sweet
heart." He placed his lips on Becky's head and kept them
there for a minute.
Baby silk hair, tiny fingers squeezing
his heart without touching him.
If he didn't get a grip, he was gonna bawl all over this beautiful child Claudette had left him.

Aiden straightened, feeling as if he didn't deserve
Becky and had never deserved Claudette. If only he could make up to Claudette for being such an arrogant jerk.

"Da Da. Loops," Becky said, showing him the loop impaled on her baby finger. Then she popped the finger into her mouth and giggled when it came away clean.

"I can't believe 'I fathered a morning person."

Claudette's mother brought a plate of fresh pancakes to the table, though Storm had been munching on dry Froot Loops.

"Ginny," Aiden said, "can you tell me where Claudette is buried, so Storm and I can pay our respects?"

Ginny dropped her fork, her expression disbelieving.
"What's wrong?" Aiden asked.

"They're not removing Claudette's life support until
noon today. That's why Social Services
isn't
coming
until later."

Aiden shot from his chair. "Claudette's alive?"

"Yes and no. She's been in a coma since the
accident.”

“
I have to see her," Aiden said. "I have to tell her that

I'll take care of Becky."

"She won't know you're there, son."

"I don't care
. '
I have to go. I have ... unfinished busi
ness to take care of."

C
hapter Thirty-nine

STORM stood stone cold and unmoving.

Life ... or death ... had just taken a new turn.

"Where's the nursing home?" Aiden asked, and after
Ginny gave him directions, he practically ran out the door.
Storm heard him unhooking the camper and starting the
engine. She stood to look out the bay window as he backed
the coach out of the driveway.

"He's in shock," Storm said when Ginny rolled her chair over and put a comforting hand on her arm.
"He's filled with guilt," the old lady said.

Storm agreed.
"That, too."
He was running again, but he
was running
toward
something for a change—no, toward
someone—the
most significant sign she'd seen that
Claudette mattered to him ... a great deal.

While she tried not to feel deserted, Storm played with Becky, which was a treat, and
yet ..
.

For heaven's sake, Aiden had gone to say good-bye to the mother of his child, and he would, of course, stay with
Claudette until after she passed, but later he'd need someone

to
comfort him, and Storm promised herself that she'd be there for him when he did.

She also realized that he might not actually come back for
her,
but he would be back for his daughter.

She simply hadn't realized how much Aiden loved Claudette until she saw the way he'd reacted.

The wall phone in the kitchen rang, startling her, which
made Becky laugh. Ginny answered it, spoke for a minute,
then dropped the phone, leaving it to swing from its cord and hit the wall.

"What is it?" Storm asked.

"She's awake. Claudette came out of her coma" Ginny
wept unrestrainedly, and though her tears should have been
of joy, Storm thought they sounded more like a soul-deep sorrow. Talk about mixed messages.

They had to be tears of joy, and so they should be.
Becky would have her mother, and Aiden ... Storm didn't know what he would do when Claudette got well—stay in Cape May or return to Salem—but wherever he went, he would probably have Claudette and Becky with him.

She suddenly felt like a fifth wheel, and how horrible
was she to be thinking of herself when someone who'd
been dying was now going to live?
Which meant that she no longer belonged here.
"I should go," Storm said.

"No!" Ginny said again, taking her hand. "You can't abandon Aiden. He'll need you more than ever, now"

"No, Ginny.
You saw him. It's Claudette he needs."

"Here. Here are the keys to my car. Go to the nursing home and see what's really going on.
Talk to Aiden.
Meet Claudette."

"Don't you want to come?" Storm asked, confused.

The old lady shivered.
"Maybe later when you come back ... if ... everything's all right, I might go, but I don't have a good feeling about this."

"Ginny, you're getting your daughter back. Becky's getting her mother."

The old lady patted her hand. "I'm old. I've seen a lot of
death in my day. I've been watching my Claudette die for a
year, you understand. 'I can't watch anymore"

"That's just it. She's going to live."

Ginny shook her head and stared out the window.

Storm washed her face and put on the little bit of makeup she kept in her purse. Thank goodness she'd
brought her purse inside for her cell phone, or her driver's license would have been gone with the motor coach.

Warlock curled himself around her legs.

Oh gosh, her kitten might be gone, too, if not for
Becky's infatuation with him. "Once again, we don't have
food or kitty litter for you, do we, Warlock? I'll have to run
to the store before I go to the nursing home. Given this change of events, I think a new carrier is in order as well."

Back in the living room, Storm couldn't fathom the torment in Ginny's expression.

"Claudette's out of her coma," Storm repeated. "She'll get better now."

"You keep thinking that, sweetheart. God knows somebody should."

Storm didn't know why she had to go to the nursing
home. She just knew, deep down, that she did.

Chapter Forty

•

Al DEN
hit the brakes in the nursing home parking lot, sur
prised that every cupboard door didn't pop open and spill
its contents. He hit the tarmac at a run.

The first floor nurse sent him to the fourth floor.

At the nurses' station there, they gave him Claudette's room number. He wasn't sure he was prepared to see her, especially in a coma.

When he got to the door, he felt dizzy, thought he might
pass out.

He blinked to clear the hallucination.

"Hello, Aiden," Claudette said. "I've been waiting for you"

Okay. Not a hallucination.
A miracle.

"You ... you've been in a coma."

"So they tell me."

"I thought ... I'm so glad you're okay." She looked
pasty, the skin beneath her fingernails purple.

"You can't be as happy to see me as I am to see you,"
she said, her breathing pattern alarming. "I know this is a shock."

He hadn't even touched her. Aiden stepped closer to the
bed, took Claudette's hand, and kissed it. "I've never been
happier about anything in my life." He tried not to focus on
the bones beneath the thin veneer of waxy skin on her
hand.

"You found our baby," she said, joy on her features—features he barely recognized, except for the light in her eyes.

"How do you know I found her?"

"I've been trying to get you here"

"Wait." Aiden held up a staying hand. "I'm confused." He bent over the bed rail and kissed her,
then
he had the
rails taken down by a nurse so he could sit beside her.
"How do you feel?"

"Pretty good, considering."

"What do you
mean,
you've been trying to get me
here?"

"Have you ever had an out-of-body experience?"
Claudette asked. "I think I've had a few. I watched them
performing the C-section on me. I floated above myself
and saw them take our baby out of my body. I stayed near the incubator and watched her grow strong. She was a preemie, so I talked to her, hoping she could hear or sense me on some level, until she was able to go home with my mother."

Claudette drifted off—back into her coma, Ai den
thought, and he shouted for help, but she opened her eyes.
"Hey, easy.
People are trying to die around here."

"That's not funny." But the disinfectants failed to hide the odor of death.

"I left my body often when I was in the coma,"
Claudette said.

Before Storm, he would have doubted those words. Maybe he still did on some level. "I know someone you should meet. You two could exchange stories."

"You were stubborn about coming
. '
I nudged the sea
horse necklace from the top cupboard to the counter for
you to find—which was very hard to do and took days'

worth
of energy—and you put it in that drawer, so deep down, there was no way for me to dig it out."

Yes, damn it. He had done that, but Storm had dug it out
later and started wearing it. "Seeing it on the counter
spooked me, Claudette. I'd just heard about your accident. What the hell am I talking about? How could you have spooked me? You were in a coma. That must have been a dream."

"For both of us?"
She smiled. "But I finally found somebody who heard my call."

"What are you saying?"

"You were in a place with enough spi
ri
tual energy for me to tap into for strength. I tried to leave clues for you there."

"What clues?"

"I wrote my name in the steam on a mirror, and when that didn't work, I wrote it in the dust on a table."

"You
did that? I thought our resident ghost was playing mind games."

"Someone there was very receptive."

"Claudette, shouldn't you be resting? Or maybe you're hungry?"

She shook her head to both suggestions.

"Maybe your meds gave you those dreams."

"You just admitted that you were in a place with a
ghost."

"I did
. '
I was."

"Someone there," Claudette said, "heard Becky crying when you were near her."

Aiden loosened his collar.
"You
put the sound of the
baby in Storm's head when 'I was nearby?"

"Storm?
Is that her name? She has a gift. She didn't
need much from me. She got you here, right?
Though I got
the sense that it wasn't easy for her, even dangerous at one point."

"Wait, what could you see?"

"I didn't see in the sense that you mean, I felt,
sensed ... objects, people ... their feelings. Why?"

"Storm and I, we've been ... seeing ... each other"