chapter 552
I continued to beg and plead with her to come back to us. At fifteen minutes, Scarlet’s whispers were loud enough for me to detect what she was saying to Cale. “How long will he give it?”
“I don’t know.” Cale seemed agitated and upset, certainly more connected to my sister than Scarlet. “Not yet.”
“Please... Cadey, please.” I felt as far and as deep as I could, thinking about how I’d had to go so very far into her brain to plant that dream. The clock continued to tick. Cadence still wasn’t breathing, and Jamie began to sound desperate. At twenty-five minutes, when Jamie said “thirty,” his voice broke. He knew that the chances of her coming back to us now, after this long, were minute at best. He couldn’t give up, though. We couldn’t give up.
Aaron blew two breaths of air into my sister’s lungs, and Jamie started counting again.
Something was different....
“Wait!” I almost didn’t recognize the sound of my own voice as I stepped forward, dragging Brandon with me. There was a stirring out in the distance, on the periphery of my mind. It wasn’t much at all, but it was a flicker, a faint pinprick of consciousness. “I can sense something,” I said as the CPR continued. “It’s faint. But it’s something.” I pulled away from Brandon, my eyes closed. I concentrated harder than I ever have before. And I began to hear my sister’s voice.
“’I have to go back.’” My eyes flew open, and I looked around at a sea of faces staring at me. “She said that, Cadence said that. Faintly. I can see it in her head. And then... and then....” I closed my eyes again and picked up the shadow of a memory from my sister’s mind. “Someone else, another woman, said to her, ‘Go back? You can’t go back. There is no back. You’re here.’” I opened my eyes again but continued to listen to see if I could hear more.
“Another woman?” Elliott asked, not being cynical but curious. “Who is she? Where is she? Is this in real time, or is this a memory?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “but I can see it in her head. I can see something in her head, and that’s better than nothing.” As I spoke, my sister’s vibrations increased. “And it’s getting stronger.”
Heather made a strange sound beside me, and I focused on her. “I hear it, too.”
The voices were there in Cadence’s head again, but this time I let Heather tell the others what we were experiencing. “‘I don’t want to be here anymore, Grandma. I’m sorry. It’s lovely here, and I’m so glad I got to see everyone, even though I didn’t get a chance to talk to Jack. But that’s okay. I’ll come here again someday. But not today. Today, I need to go back. There are people there, people who need me, people who love me, people that I love. I have to get back to them. Now.’”
“Grandma?” Brandon asked behind me. I turned to look at him. “She thinks she’s talking to her grandma? Like Janette?”
“And she saw Jack Cook?” Elliott shook his head and ran a hand through his hair.
“Can you hear anything else?” The desperation in Aaron’s voice was evident.
It wasn’t so hard to hear Cadence’s mind now. “Someone else said, ‘Honey, even if there was a way to go back....’ but Cadence didn’t listen to him. She took off running.” My eyes were wide now as I realized what was happening—or at least what I hoped was happening. She was trying to get back to us.
“Her mind’s runnin’ wild, all over the place,” Heather reported, and I watched inside of Cadence’s head as what Heather told them flickered around like an action movie. “She’s thinkin’ about all of y’all, thinkin’ about getting’ back here... havin’ a baby... tryin’ to find a green field.”
In Cadence’s head, I saw all of our faces, saw her thinking about starting a family, but Heather was right. She was frantically searching for a field for some reason I couldn’t explain.
“She’s thinking of all of those things right now?” Elliott asked. I nodded at him as Aaron blew oxygen into her lungs. “What’s she thinking about now?”
“She’s running.” I closed my eyes so I could focus. “She’s trying to ‘find a way out of here.’” That was a singular thought in my sister’s mind. Find the field. Get out of here. “She doesn’t know where she’s going, but she has to get out of here and get back home to the people that she loves, the people that love her.”
When Heather picked up where I left off, she spoke so quickly, her accent so thick, it was hard for even me to understand her, even though I was seeing the same thing she was describing. “Her legs are on fire, she’s runnin’ so fast, but she don’t know where she’s goin’. Her heart’s beatin’ so loud, I can feel it shakin’ my body. And her lungs are burnin’. She feels like she can’t breathe. She ain’t runnin’ no more. She’s stopped, doubled over, cause her chest is heavin’ so hard. She’s passin’ out, I think. Fallin’ on the ground on her back, lookin’ up at the sky, clutchin’ at her chest. And... and... she’s out.”
Panic welled up inside of me again as I realized Heather was right. I could still detect my sister’s mind—but all of the thoughts were gone, like it had been before I was able to hear her right after I’d picked up on her presence.
“She’s out?” Elliott asked. “What do you mean she’s out? Of course she’s out.”
“No, I mean I can’t hear her thoughts no more,” Heather explained. “Like before. But it’s different. Because she ain’t gone. Her mind’s still there. It’s just blank.”
“Like what you thought you were sensing before—an unconscious mind or whatever you said?”
The sound of Christian’s voice behind me was jarring. He hadn’t said a word to anyone in so long, I’d forgotten he was there.
“No, it ain’t like that at all. That’s still there. This is different. This is certainly Cadence.”
“Cass—” Elliott began, but I cut him off.
“She’s right. Heather’s right. Cadence’s mind is still there, she just isn’t thinking about anything right now.”
We all turned and looked at Cadence expectantly. I was praying, my mouth silently moving, “Please Cadence, please. Come on.”
Jamie said thirty; Aaron leaned forward to breathe into Cadence’s mouth and froze.
