The only difference between then and now, between mother and daughter, was the bottle of booze. And the truth.
Tears dripped down Lucy’s cheeks, wetting her new scar, before dripping off her chin. Her stitches were gone. The swelling was gone.
Had it only been four days since she’d found that bone?
Allie’s bone. She’d held her sister in her hand.
She’d promised herself she wouldn’t cry. She wasn’t going to lose control again. She wasn’t going to end up like Sandy.
And looking at that picture, the sweet little face, the companion she’d carried in her heart her whole life, she sobbed a bit more. Allison Elizabeth Hayes had been an innocent baby who’d brought joy into the world. How could anyone extinguish that joy?
Why?
Maybe, if she knew what had happened…if she could understand—
Her phone rang, startling her, bringing her back from that long-ago day in the woods. She was home early. It could be Sandy having noticed her car…?.
She couldn’t talk to her mother in this state.
It was Ramsey.
“Hello?” She tried her best to sound normal.
“You called. Are you crying?”
Lying seemed pointless. “Yeah. They identified the body. It was Allie.”
She wasn’t fighting the news. Wasn’t even shocked.
She didn’t know what she was.
“Oh, Luce, I’m sorry.” And then, “Lord, I wish I was closer.”
The emotion she heard in his normally even tone wrapped around her, and she cried a little harder.
“I didn’t know her,” she said. “How can I love someone I never even met?”
“She was your sister, Lucy. You loved her memory, if nothing else.”
With her favorite picture of baby Allie in her lap, Lucy traced the cheeks again. “All my life I’ve felt as though Allie was out there someplace, speaking to me, giving me the strength to take care of Mama and get to her so that we could all be together again. It’s like both of them were counting on me, and when I’d look at Allie’s picture, I’d feel the joy emanating from her, and I’d know I could come through for them.”
She wasn’t sobbing anymore, but the tears hadn’t completely stopped falling. She wiped her nose, looking down at the box.
“It’s why I kept looking, never letting up, because I could hear her calling to me. Where other girls had best friends and confidantes, I had Allie. When I was younger I’d talk to her sometimes, like she was really there. Yet in truth, Allie was never out there. She was never more than a six-month-old baby who died way too soon. I didn’t have a big sister calling to me all these years, giving me the strength to go on.”
“Your own strength kept you going.”
“Then why do I feel so bereft? Like I just lost my best friend? My lifelong companion?”
“You know I don’t believe in much I can’t see, or eventually prove, but I don’t discredit the chance that you’ve had that companion all these years, just as you say. They say that aside from flesh and bones we all have spirits—something that lives on after our bones return to the earth. Maybe it’s not Allie’s body that’s been calling to you, Luce. Maybe it’s her spirit. And maybe she led you to her bones the other night so that you could stop looking for her. Maybe it’s her way of telling you its time to get on with your life.”
She hadn’t thought it possible for anyone to ease the agony in her heart. She’d been wrong.
“You really think so?”
“I know that there’s more to life than bones and death.” “God, I hope you’re right.”
“I don’t believe you imagined what you felt.”