Hailey made a skeptical noise.
“Honestly. You’re as obedient as a ventriloquist’s puppet, Hailey.” Blair knocked Luke in the upper arm with her fist. “I want you to know that, seeing as how this is a really lousy time for you, you don’t have to worry about me breaking our deal by drinking or smoking. I might do a little weed. But that’s all.”
He scowled.
She laughed. “See how sensitive I can be?”
They left.
He dragged a chair to Finley’s bedside, held her hand, and watched the steady rise and fall of her chest. The movie screen in his brain replayed the image of her falling out of sight. The image of her lying on the rocky hillside. The image of the chopper drawing her into the air.
Older memories played. Ethan asking him question after question as they’d walked toward the building to store sports equipment. His brother’s face when he’d told him to go to the back of the line. The hallway caving in with slabs of concrete too heavy to survive.
“He’d want you to know that he doesn’t blame you,” Hailey had said. “He forgives you.”
Sorrow built inside Luke.
“He loves you, and he wants you to have a good future.”
He bent an elbow onto the mattress near their joined hands, then rested his forehead on his arm. He made no sound as the scaffolding that had been crumbling since he’d met Finley fell. Hot tears filled his eyes.
Fine, he thought fiercely. He’d outgrown the old methods of coping. They weren’t doing him any favors. When Finley came back, he needed to be better than he’d been.
He’d asked for God’s forgiveness back on the side of Blood Mountain. If Finley could be trusted, and she could, then all that was left was for him to forgive himself.
He imagined the scene Finley had described in the car the night they’d driven back from dinner with Robbie and June.
Him, standing in a jail cell.
He saw chains, cracked, broken, useless at his feet. He saw a figure, a man, made from nothing but light. The figure pushed open the cell’s door and beckoned Luke to follow.
Luke hesitated. The figure walked forward, toward the prison’sexit. The air around Luke in the cell darkened, but Luke didn’t move.
The figure returned and the light returned. He waited for Luke, expectant.
Luke nodded.
The figure began walking again.
This time, Luke followed. He put more and more distance between himself and the cell. The figure swung open another door and they were out of the prison. Walking down a path in the woods.
Free.
When Luke at last sat upright, new and unfamiliar hope had taken up residence in his chest.
He reached for the journal and pen someone had purchased so that visitors could leave notes and prayers for Finley to read later. He ripped several pages from the back.
When he was alone here with Finley and wasn’t talking to her, he often played music on a portable speaker or movies on the room’s TV. Sebastian had said she might have some awareness of her surroundings. If so, he wanted her to have awareness of things she liked. Today, he used his phone to select a musical track that made it sound like they were canoeing through a rainforest.
He stared at the blank pages.
“Have you written about what you went through?” Finley had asked him.
She’d been trying to communicate something important to him that night. He’d dismissed it then.
He was listening now. Taking it seriously now.
He’d never written a letter to Ethan, but there was nothing he wouldn’t do for Finley.
