Chapter 123

• “Mom …” What could I say? I didn’t need to state the obvious, that I was pregnant, but this was the first time she had met Darren. She had left me with Alfred, thinking I would be taken care of there. I walked up to her, and Darren kept his arm around me as he accompanied me. After the trauma he had been through, he wasn’t about to let go of me for a second, especially in this strange place. I noticed he kept glancing at Azrael, and it was clear he didn’t trust him. I can’t say I did either, but it was more like I accepted his presence for what it was.
• She looked exactly the way I remembered her, only she looked healthy now. She smiled, slow and unsure, as if I might dissolve if she moved too fast. “Hi, baby,” she said, voice thick and real, not the echo I’d tried to preserve for years. “Lissa, look at you. It feels like you are an entirely different person now.” She reached a tentative hand toward me, and I took it greedily. As if she were a lifeline and I didn’t want the rough waters to drag it away.
• “Mom,” I croaked. I was touching her. I heard her voice again and I could smell her. It was overwhelming. All these things I thought were lost forever. It felt so soothing, surreal, complete, and impossible to hear her voice again. What I wouldn’t have given before just to hear her voice. When you think something like that is lost to you forever, but then amazingly, you get it back … there are no words to express how you feel. Maybe almost liberating? As if a part of you was locked away. The part that wanted to ignore the truth and pretend everything was okay. That your mother wasn’t dead, because accepting it was too painful. And now that she was in front of me … it was free. Wow, did I feel like a child suddenly. A little girl who desperately needed her mother.