Indigo

medic let him. Did the medic think it was useless? I watched Rennick in a panicked state. He cleared my airway. He pressed on my lifeless body. It was so white. And it looked so small from up here. Again I tried to push myself nearer, but … nothing. If anything, I floated farther away, up higher.

I struggled more from my vantage point to move, to get there. But it was all in vain, because I was nothing. I was gone from myself.

Rennick pinched my nose, breathed into my mouth. A sad and desperate last kiss. I struggled, but it was useless. Then he began to press on my chest, three even compressions just like they teach you in CPR class. But something changed. I could feel them, the pressure on my sternum, on my rib cage, right there, right at the source of all of this. And with the pressure came the spark.

My vision tunneled and it all turned indigo, a blinding indigo flash, and then all was silent. For what seemed like a very long time. All I knew was the indigo. I was surrounded by it, bathing in it, tasting it, hearing only it.

Then it was his face, just his face so close to mine. And I wondered, was this heaven? But then, no, I saw salt water dripping from his hair, like it was happening in slow motion. A bead dropped from his forelock onto his eyelashes, then onto my face.

The first breath burned hot in my throat. He moved his mouth, but I couldn’t hear him yet. He smiled that smile. I reached up a shaking hand, and with one finger I touched that spot, those teeth, that overlap, and he was saying something over and over. And gradually a din, a little rustle of sound, then his voice. And it was in my ear. “Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me.”

I threw my arms around his neck, pulled myself up to him, and he held me against him, cradled me in his arms, in his lap.

After a long time, I opened my eyes, and he pulled back to look at me, the sun glinting off of his hair. A crash of thunder jarred me back into myself.

“I used myself up,” I said.

“I know.” He didn’t seem mad, didn’t seem anything but relieved. He kissed the tip of my chin, each of my eyelids, my nose.

“Guess I’ll have to keep you around.” My voice was a scratchy whisper. “You’re getting good at this lifesaving thing,” I said.

He laughed then, a glorious, booming sound. And when he kissed me, the sky broke into another boom of thunder, and rain began to sheet down on us, the sun still high in the sky.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

19

“I have a present for you,” Rennick said, holding out his hand as we stood by Sophie’s headstone. In his palm was a delicate silver chain, but instead of a charm there was the most magnificent rock, a tiny polished yet uncarved blue stone, sparkling in the September Chicago sun.

“Rennick—” I said, my heart fluttering in my chest.

“I found it on the shore of Pontchartrain. That Fourth of July. It’s quartz.” He smiled. I picked it up and admired the way the sunlight hit the surface of the rock.

“It’s the most perfect color.” It was just this side of purple, just that side of blue. Indigo. I rolled it around in my fingers. “Thank you.” And I thought about something. “What does indigo in an aura mean?”

“We don’t want to inflate your ego or anything,” Rennick joked. “Wisdom,” he said, eyeing me. “Bravery.”

I flushed. I couldn’t hear this about myself. “Could you put it on me?” His fingers graced that spot on the back of my neck and I shivered. “When we first met, you said you knew I was stubborn and generous … kind. Which color of the aura goes with those?”

“I didn’t know any of that from your aura,” Rennick said, finishing with the necklace.

“No?”

“That’s just from watching you, seeing how you operate.” He smiled, squinted at me playfully. I thought of that first day I met him, that first time I looked in those eyes. The day at the Crawdaddy Shack, the sun shining along with the rain. And then again that day on the dock, when we saved each other.

I saw now that this was what life was. I looked down at Sophie’s granite headstone. And I looked up again at Rennick. The sun along with the rain.

And it made me think of what Mom had said when I told her and Dad about the lightning.

“It’s the price we pay for love, honey. It hurts this much because we love so much,” she had told me, holding on to my hand. “We are not in control of things. Ever. We only have that illusion. The death of a loved one shatters that.”

The lightning had killed Sophie, stopped her heart, and shattered me. There had been no other signs, no burns, nothing on Sophie’s body, but that was how lightning worked. It was haphazard. Random. Messy. Like so many things in life. In a way, it seemed worse, not better, to know that I had had nothing to do with it. Worse because it was just so arbitrary. Unpredictable.

But I had nodded at Mom. “The thing we learn, though, is that we still have to keep going. Even though it could happen again. To me. To someone else.”

Mom added, “We love anyway. Even with death around every corner. That’s hope. That’s faith.”

And wasn’t that the biggest decision of them all? Behind everything in life? Wrapped up in every step of our journey? Every chance we took? Faith. The question and the answer.

A million yeses.

I fingered the blue stone. “Thank you,” I told Rennick, feeling the blush rise in my neck. “For the necklace, for visiting Sophie’s grave with me, for so many things.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, and he tipped my chin toward him.

I stood on my tiptoes, kissed him on the lips. He smiled. And the look on his face, it was … something. The tender, hopeful gaze of his eyes. What was it? Pride?

And in that instant, I knew. It was love.

I pressed my face into the hollow of his collarbone and inhaled his laundry-fresh scent. So this is what it feels like.

I bent down on my knees then, did what I came here to do. I said a prayer for Sophie, for her soul, for where she was; to God, or to that power greater than us, than me, than the touch, greater even than lightning. “I love you, Sophie,” I said.

I opened my case, withdrew my violin in the chilly September sun. I stood up and played for Sophie, Mozart’s Laudate Dominum, which I couldn’t bring myself to play at her funeral. It spoke of love and loss, sadness and grief, but also hope and remembrance. Tranquillo. I played it all, my eyes closed. And I felt it all, with every note, with every push and pull of my bow, the symphony of emotions I held so close for Sophie, for all she meant to me, for all I wanted to tell her.

And when I finished, I opened my eyes, and I saw Rennick, his eyes closed too. He was feeling too. He knew what it all meant. He didn’t live only on the surface.

“It’s your voice,” he said. “That violin is your voice.”

I nodded. Because for so long, I had been silent. And I had so much to say. To everyone. To Sophie.

I sat on the grass, tracing Sophie’s name on her simple marble headstone. I spoke to her in my mind, told her I was sorry, told her I loved her, told her goodbye. I pictured her then, not on the rocks of that beach, but on Christmas morning, her curls a mess. Learning to ride her bike without training wheels. The elation on her face when she succeeded. Sophie living. Sophie jumping in. Sophie being happy.

This was what I held on to. It was just a storm.

And when I was ready, Rennick stuck out his hand to help me up from the ground, and I grabbed it, my palm thrust against his. And there it was again, that human touch, that spark, that simple kindness, a helping hand when you really needed one.

Just like I had needed it so long ago, when Rennick first placed the crawdad in my palm. He didn’t have to care. He could have ignored my colors. He could have ignored me. He could have given up on hope. Given up on