“The evidence is pointing that way,” June replied carefully. “We still have gaps that need to be filled in and dots to connect.” She swallowed. “But it’s pointing that way.”
“What about ten years ago?” Lucy asked. “Was that Victoria, too?”
June held her gaze. “We don’t know yet.”
The elevator doors opened on the third floor. They moved quickly along the corridor, and June matched Lucy’s pace.
“Before we go in,” Lucy said, slowing slightly as they approached a closed door at the end of the hall, “I want you to be prepared. Judy doesn’t look good right now.” She stopped and turned to face June directly. “The secondary bleed was serious. She’s out of immediate danger, but she’s very weak. Her speech will be fragmented and effortful. Don’t try to push her and don’t try to fill in what she’s saying.” Her eyes held June’s with the quiet authority of someone who meant every word. “Let her say what she needs to say.”
“I understand,” June replied.
“Good.” Lucy pushed open the door.
June stepped inside.
The room was dim, clean, and very quiet. The monitors beside the bed produced their steady, unhurried rhythm, and the afternoon light came through the half-closed blinds in pale, even stripes across the floor. Judy lay in the bed with her eyes closed, and the sight of her landed in June’s chest with more force than she’d anticipated.
Judy had struck June as a woman of contained, purposeful energy. Even in the difficult circumstances of their first meeting, there had been a quality of intention about her, the sense of someone who moved through the world with a clear idea of what she was doing and why. The woman in the bed had none of that visible. She looked small against the pillows. Her face was pale and still. The bandaging around her head was clean but significant. Her hands lay loose at her sides with the particular,undefended quality of someone who had spent a long time unconscious.
Seeing Judy like that hit her full force as June realized that Judy was utterly alone in the world. She had no family, as her brother was gone and so was her husband. June had to swallow a lump in her throat and push the thoughts away.
“She has no more family,” June said softly and for Lucy’s ears only, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. “No next of kin to notify or anyone to be here when she wakes up.”
“You and my sister think so much alike.” Lucy smiled. “We’ve been making sure she knows she’s not on her own,” she assured June softly from beside her, as though she’d followed the thought exactly. “Lacey, Dean, Noah, Ginny, and I have all been taking turns to sit with Judy. She’s not going to wake up to an empty room while any of us can prevent it.”
June swallowed harder against the tightness in her throat. She wasn’t surprised. Of course, that was what Lucy and Lacey and Dean had done. It was what the people of Sandpiper Shores did for each other, and it never stopped moving her, even after all the years she’d been watching them do it.
Lucy crossed to the bed and gently touched Judy’s arm.
“Judy,” Lucy murmured. “June is here.”
Judy’s eyes opened slowly.
They were glazed with effort and medication, the focus in them coming and going like a signal through poor weather. Her gaze moved across the ceiling before it found June, and when it did, June pulled the chair close to the bed and sat down so that Judy didn’t have to work to look up at her.
Judy’s hand moved across the blanket in a slow, reaching motion.
June took it.
Judy’s fingers were cool and dry. June held them carefully, the way you hold something fragile that still has weight to it.
“Hello,” June told her quietly. “I’m not going to ask you something as pointless as how you’re feeling.”
A sound came from Judy that was unmistakably a laugh, even as weak and brief as it was. It arrived and departed in the same breath.
“Like I was hit over the head,” Judy managed, her voice barely above a whisper, “and then rolled down a hill.”
June’s brows lifted involuntarily. She glanced at Lucy, who gave a small nod, confirming that Judy still had her memories.
June turned back to Judy.
“Judy,” she began gently. “Do you remember the accident or what happened to you?”
“I remember.” Judy’s voice was thin. Each word arrived separately, as though she was carrying them one at a time across a significant distance. “Everything. I remember… everything.”
June kept her expression steady. She kept her hand around Judy’s and didn’t move.
“June.” Judy’s eyes, still glazed but holding, found hers directly. “You must… get… Victoria.”
