RaeAnne Thayne: Saving Grace

He couldn’t possibly leave her in this dump of an apartment by herself, not when she was in this kind of pain. And he had just given his word he wouldn’t take her to the hospital.

Lily. Lily Kihualani could take care of her. He seized on the idea with vast relief. She was always looking for somebody else to mother and with her nursing background, she would know just how to treat a burn like this one.

And if she didn’t, he’d make her find out.

It was only after he had carried Grace Solarez out of her apartment, laid her carefully in the back seat of the Jaguar and pulled out onto the highway back toward the ferry and home that he realized, with a grimace, that he hadn’t been able to answer a single damn question about Grace Solarez.

She awoke to agonizing pain.

“Shhh little keiki,” a voice as comforting as the sea murmured in her ear. “Hush now. Stay still.”

Someone was taking a hot poker to her back and she was supposed to just lie here and take it? Yeah, right. Forget it, sister. She tried to rise but strong arms held her in place.

“How much longer is this going to take, Lily?” A deep male voice asked. It sounded familiar but she couldn’t see anything past the floodlights of pain exploding behind her eyelids.

Her head throbbed at the effort but still she tried to place the voice. She had a fleeting, strangely comforting memory of a sun-bronzed stranger with a sweet smile and eyes the pure, vivid green of new leaves.

He’d given her back Marisa. She frowned. That was impossible, wasn’t it? Marisa was dead, had been gone for a year. No one could bring her back. No one.

“It’ll take as long as it takes,” the sea-voice answered. “No more, no less.”

“I think she’s coming back to us. She’s going to hurt like hell when she wakes up.”

“You think I don’t know that? That there’s one nasty burn.”

“Can’t you give her something to take away the pain?”

“What do you think I am, some kind of miracle worker?”

The other voice was like waves crashing against the rocks now. Listening to it made her head ache as if she were stuck in a room full of pounding hammers.

“I’m not a doctor,” it went on. “I said take her to the hospital. Would you listen to me? No! She stays here, you said. She don’t want no hospital. Okay then. You want me to fix up the wahine, I fix up the wahine. But I don’t need you yappin’ at me.”

“Sorry.”

“You better be. Now hold her still while I put the ointment on.”

Fire streaked down her back again as cruel hands rubbed the raw skin of her back. Grace fought to hold on to consciousness but the pain was too great, screaming and clawing at her. In a desperate bid to escape it, she finally surrendered to the quiet, peaceful place inside her.

The next time she opened her eyes, it was to find two huge green eyes and a head full of blond curls peeking over the side of the bed. Emma, she remembered. The child she had pulled from that wreck, what seemed a lifetime ago. What was she doing in the middle of her nightmare?

“Hi,” Emma chirped.

Grace tried to answer but her throat was thick, gritty, like she’d swallowed a quart jar full of sand. Her back felt as if the skin had been flayed open and scoured with the same stuff.

The burn she had suffered from the flying debris of the explosion, she remembered.

She had tried to care for her injuries on her own but hadn’t been able to reach the center of her back well enough to apply salve to the burn or even to bandage it.

She had done her best, but by the third day after the accident she had become shaky, feverish, disoriented. She remembered weird, nightmarish visions of whirling cars and demons with orange eyes and men who would leave little girls to burn to death.

The blistering skin must have become infected. That explained the fever, the dizziness, the hallucinations. So how did she get from curling up in her single bed with its thin, lumpy mattress—afraid to move for the pain that would claw across her skin if she did—to this strange room with its cool linen sheets and a curly-haired little elf-spy?

“Are you gonna die like my mama?”

Startled, Grace blinked at the girl watching her with a forehead furrowed by concern. She cleared her throat and tried to speak but couldn’t force the words past the sand.

A crystal pitcher of ice and water and a clean glass waited tantalizingly close, on the table next to the bed. She fumbled her fingers out to reach it but came up about six inches short. After several tries, she let her arm flop to the side of the bed in frustration.

Emma must have understood. “You want a drink?” she asked eagerly. “I’ll get it. I can even pour it all by myself.”

With two hands around the pitcher and her tongue caught carefully between her teeth with fierce concentration, she filled the glass then carefully set the pitcher back on the table.

“Lily said you prob’ly wouldn’t be able to drink right from a cup at first because you can’t turn over, so I said you could use my bendy straws. See?” she said, with a proud grin that revealed a gap in her upper row of teeth.

She helped Grace find the straw then held the cup steady while she sipped. In all her life, she didn’t think she’d ever tasted anything as absolutely heavenly as that ice water. It washed away the sand, leaving only a scratchy ache in her throat.

“Thank you,” she murmured when she’d had enough. Her voice sounded rough and gravely, as if it hadn’t been used for a long while.

“You’re welcome,” the little girl said. “Lily and my daddy said I’m not supposed to bother you but I’m not, am I? I’m helping.”

Something didn’t make sense. It took her several seconds before she realized what had been nagging at her subconscious. I’ve come to thank you for saving my daughter’s life, the golden-haired stranger had said. His daughter.

If he was Emma’s father, who was the man who had been driving the car that night, the scruffy-looking drunk with the dark hair and tattoo who had been willing to let the little girl die?

Somehow it didn’t seem appropriate to ask the child. “Where am I?” she asked instead.

“My house. My daddy brought you here yesterday.” The little girl’s forehead crinkled again. “Or maybe it was the day before. I forget.”

Grace tried to remember coming here but couldn’t summon anything but fragmented images after opening the door to the stranger Emma claimed was her father. “Why am I here?”

“Daddy said you were sick and we needed to take care of you for a while. Lily put some gunk on your back. It stinks.” The girl bent down until her face was only inches away from hers, until she could feel the moist, milk-scented warmth of her breath on her cheek.

“Are you gonna die?” Emma asked again.

She had wanted to, hadn’t she? She remembered headlights and the sharp bite of a mosquito and a dark night of despair, and then that survival instinct bubbling up inside her out of nowhere when she thought the car would explode.

Did she still want to die? She didn’t want to think about it right now.

“My mama died when I was only two,” Emma confided. “She was in an airplane crash. She didn’t live with us but I still cried a lot.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“Who’s that?”

Grace’s gaze followed the direction of Emma’s finger. She was completely unprepared for the agonizing pain that clutched her stomach at the sight of Marisa’s picture propped against a lamp on the bedside table. She must have been so focused on the pitcher of water she hadn’t noticed it before.

She absorbed those little gamine features—as familiar to her as her own. The big dark eyes, the dimpled smile, the long glossy braids. The grief welled up inside her, completely blocking the physical pain of the burn.