“All right, honey. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”
“Hurry, mom. These guys don’t play around.”
I hung up and gave the driver new directions. I wasn’t one to bite my nails, but I was wound so tight I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have a single fingernail left by the time we got to the motel. Heart pounding, I settled back in the seat, pushed the button to lower the window and threw my cell phone out onto a bank of grass so it wouldn’t shatter. I hoped they would try to track my cell. Hoped someone would pick it up and start moving, preferably in the opposite direction.
Stop. Go. Drive. Stop. The seconds ticked by like hours and I would swear that damn car hit every red light between me and my baby.
Every single fucking red light. And every time we stopped moving, it felt like the shadows were stalking me. Watching. Waiting.
I breathed a sigh of relief when the driver pulled into the motel parking lot. I tipped him a twenty and asked him to forget he ever saw me, told him I was running from a psycho, abusive ex-boyfriend who beat me. The guy frowned and gave me back the twenty. Said to keep it since I might need it more than him. When he drove away, I was confident he wouldn’t talk, at least not for a while.
My old beat up sedan with Wyatt’s booster seat in the back was parked outside the fifth blue door. A flash of blond hair disappeared behind a swinging curtain seconds before the door opened. And just like that, I could breathe.
Wyatt’s smile could have lit cities as he hurried to me as fast as he could. His pace was slow and awkward, the brace on his leg keeping him from going as quickly as he wanted. I lifted him up and hugged him close as he buried his face in my neck and squeezed as hard as his little arms could squeeze.
God, he smelled so good, felt so soft, warm. Sweet.
“I missed you, Mommy.”
Those words. My heart cracked into a thousand pieces. “I missed you, too, baby.”
“Don’t ever go away again.”
I couldn’t stop the tears now. They streamed down my face like water from a faucet. “I won’t, Wyatt. I promise. Never again.”
I carried him into the hotel room where my mom was waiting, gave her a quick hug and settled Wyatt down on one of the hard beds. She looked at me with concerned eyes, although she had the relieved look of a mother who sent her child out into the world for the first time. I hadn’t really thought of how brave she was, letting me go into space. God, she’d sent her child into space!
I reached across and squeezed her hand and she gave me a watery smile in return.
“I have something special to show you.”
Wyatt clapped his hands like he was about to get a present, so I had to clarify. “You can’t keep it, but some very nice people let Mommy borrow it to heal your leg.”
My mom stepped closer, her hand coming to rest on my shoulder, eyes wide. “What? What are you talking about?”
I looked up into her confused face and smiled through my tears. “You aren’t going to believe this.” I reached into my purse and pulled out the ReGen wand. Activating it the way Rachel had taught me, I took off Wyatt’s brace and pushed Wyatt’s dinosaur pajamas up above his knee, which was foolish, because the healing would all happen below the surface, but I wanted to watch him. I needed to see.
“Don’t be afraid,” I told him. My heart was beating so hard I was sure Wyatt could hear it. This was it. I could heal my child, make him whole, with just a wave of this wand. No surgery. No pain.
The wand turned blue and Wyatt’s eyes rounded. “What is it?” he asked with his perfect little lisp.
I grinned, happier than I’d been since the accident. “A magic wand. I brought it back from outer space just for you.”
“Really?” The cowlick on the top of his head had gone a bit wild and cute little spikes of pale blond hair shot straight up off his head like sprouts of grass. “Do you know the magic word?”
“Of course, I do.” I leaned down and kissed him on the nose. That done, I lifted the wand over his leg and said, “Abracadabra.”
Wyatt’s excitement faded and he grew serious, lying back on the bed where my mother quickly moved to prop some pillows behind him. The routine was old and too familiar.
But this would be the last time. Ever.
I held the wand over him, moving it over his leg until the indicator light Rachel taught me to watch blinked at me that the ReGen wand had done its job. I hadn’t kept track of time, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute, maybe two. That was it. Two minutes and he was healed—I hoped. I ran it over the rest of him then, just to be sure. If there was anything wrong with him, anything I didn’t know about, I wanted it fixed. Cured. Healed. I wanted him perfect.
When I was finished, I looked at my son, at the sleepy, contented expression on his face.
“How does that feel, baby?”
Wyatt’s little smile brought the tears back. “It doesn’t hurt, Mommy.”