really, thin but strong-looking, like him.
“Why’s that?”
“Your hands are way too pretty. They’re an artist’s hands.”
“Speaking of pretty,” he said, with this gorgeous, flirty smirk. But he didn’t get to finish. The waiter chose that moment to place the bill on the table and ask us if we needed anything else.
Rennick took out his wallet.
“Thank you,” I said, “but I really can pay for myself.”
“No,” he said, leaving some bills on the table. “I mean, it’s a date, isn’t it?”
He stood up then, and I couldn’t help but smile. “A date. Sure.” And I noticed that he definitely watched for my reaction.
Rennick drove us home like a bifocals-wearing grandpa. As we got nearer to the house and turned down Manderly, I saw that the reporters and their interest in me had not waned at all. If anything, the news vans had multiplied. I had Rennick pass my house and take a roundabout way to the back alley. The narrow gravel pathway was just wide enough for a vehicle. Rennick pulled up to the back of the garage and hid the Jeep from view.
The sky rumbled and a handful of thick raindrops plopped on us when we got out. We ducked behind the lilac bushes. “You are awfully popular.”
“Just stay down.” We crouched low and, thanks to the banana trees and the lilac hedge, were pretty hidden as we ran up the back steps. Loud thunder boomed through the air, the rain coming down in a sheet of cool water. I put my key in the door. “We made it!”
“Excuse me, Miss Harlowe?” A reporter came from around the front of the house, but I turned the key in the lock and threw the door open.
Rennick stepped in behind me, and my flip-flops squeaked on the kitchen floor. He shook his gorgeous hair, and I heard voices. I had figured that Mom would still be home, but that was it. Rennick shot me a look, and I shrugged.
I stuck my head into the family room.
“Honey?” Mom’s eyes apologized to me even as she beckoned for me to come. I did so hesitantly. Rennick followed close behind.
Dad stood up from the couch and offered his hand to Rennick. I heard Mom introducing them, but my eyes were glued to the couch. There sat a hollow-eyed young couple and a gangly kid of maybe ten or eleven years old. His face was swollen and sad, his head cancer-bald, with a violent red and purple scar from his left temple to the top of his head.
“I’m Seth Krane?” His voice was so small, so high.
“I know,” I said, and then I placed him. Declan Krane worked for my dad. This was his son and he had cancer, something rare, in his blood, I thought. There were little cans with his picture on them collecting donations all over the Garden District, at the Starbucks, at the Circle K. “It’s nice to meet you.”
Seth’s mother cleared her throat and got up from the couch, offering me her hand.
“I can’t,” I said, shaking my head. I backed up a step and bumped right into Rennick. He pressed a palm flat on my back, between my shoulder blades. A gesture in support, I thought.
“We are so sorry to bother you, Corrine,” Seth’s mother said, her words tumbling out fast and desperate. “We have no other hope. It’s critical, they say. Just keeping him comfortable.”
Her words were atrocious and difficult to hear, but inside I was freaking out. Was this what it meant to have the touch? What if I killed that little kid instead of helped him? My brain kind of shut off. My mother’s voice was audible, but it sounded far away from me. She was explaining what had happened to Sophie, how uncertain I was. But all I could really focus on was the pressure of that hand on my back. I took several deep breaths and refocused my eyes.
I studied Seth’s face, the hazel eyes buried deep under his hairless brow, the crooked teeth answering my gaze with a smile. A smile for me, with empathy and understanding, as if
I opened my mouth to explain myself, to politely decline. And that’s when Seth’s father stood up. Balding and slight, he spoke quietly in a low baritone. “Miss Harlowe, we know we have no right to ask what we are asking. But we … Seth wants you to try. And we understand there are no guarantees.”
I listened, and as I watched the father look down at his fragile little son, I saw how he gazed at him, that loving, adoring hand stroking the boy’s face as if it were the most beautiful thing in the world. And the father bent down then and gave Seth’s ragged scar an absentminded kiss. And the look on his face, it was pure and gorgeous and familiar.
This was how my parents had looked at Sophie.
And the dark hollows around Seth’s mother’s eyes, these were my own mother’s eyes not so long ago. The look of grief and loss. Unspeakable loss. The worst loss.
The pendulum had been swinging for me. But right now, for this moment, it stopped. It was decided.
And then I found myself speaking before I had even decided to. I sat down in the old rocker across from the couch. “I can try, but even I don’t quite understand it.”
“Thank you, God!” the mother gasped, and clutched at the little boy, pulling him to her bosom.
“We appreciate this, Miss Harlowe,” the father said, looking right into my eyes. “No matter what the outcome.”
The man turned and spoke to my father in low tones, and my dad clasped his shoulder. When I caught Dad’s eye, he nodded at me slightly.
I knelt in front of the seated boy on the couch. I held both my hands out, and I asked him to place his hands in mine. I stole a look at Rennick, who was watching from behind me. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know what to do.
Hadn’t Rennick said that his own mother had only been able to summon it about half the time?
I closed my eyes and focused on Seth. I thought about him, what was going on with his own body turning traitor on him. I focused on myself, my insides, yearning for that small, indescribable spark to generate inside my ribs. I focused on the indigo light, on the feeling and sensation of being a conduit.
I held this pose, kneeling in front of Seth, reaching within myself to find the start of it all. But nothing.
“Your hands are sweaty,” Seth whispered.
“They are,” I laughed. I opened my eyes, but I didn’t let go of his hands.
I tried to remember the feeling of it, right there, under my sternum, the wispy flutter of the first few sparks, and then the full burst of flames. But nothing happened.
I tried for a long while, but in the end, nothing.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
The mother wiped tears from her eyes. “Don’t apologize,” she said. “You tried.”
“It’s okay,” Seth said, and he placed a small hand on my cheek. Inside, I broke. Just a cleaving away from all that made sense. At that moment, I believed. I knew I had the power to help this boy, to save lives. I had this.
I just didn’t know how to control it. Yet.
“We very much appreciate it,” the father said.
“I don’t know how to start it,” I said. “It’s—”
“It’s okay.” This was my mother’s voice.
“I think I can do it, though. I just need—” But Mom was already ushering them out the door. Dad was shaking the man’s hand again. And I was so enraged at how helpless I felt.
Rennick came and stood close to me, his head bent over mine, an intimate gesture. “You believe it,” he whispered.
“I believe it.”
11
