“Aimee.” The voice comes out of the darkness and pulls me back. I feel like I’m drowning, but there are strong arms around me trying to lift me up, trying to save me. “Aimee,” the woman’s voice says and, in the back of my mind, I recognize it. It’s a voice I haven’t heard in such a long while, but it’s so familiar at the same time.
“She’s opening her eyes,” another woman’s voice notes through the darkness that feels as thick as molasses.
I blink, trying to clear the blurriness from my vision, and find that I’m on the couch in the Summers’ family room. Sally is on one side of me and on the other—I have to rub my eyes to believe what I’m seeing—is my mother.
“Hi there, you’re awake,” Sally says, looking so relieved I wonder if perhaps they hadn’t expected me to wake up at all.
“I guess,” I say groggily, moving to get up. But my entire field of vision swims as if I were on a boat and I sit back down again heavily.
“You’ve had a bit of a bang on the head,” Sally says calmly. “Bill found you,” she tells me, filling in the blanks.
“Jake?” I ask, before everything that happened comes rushing back to me at speed and hits me like a freight train. “Oh, God,” I moan, clutching my head.
I can see that Sally herself is close to tears, but she’s trying to put on a brave front for my benefit. “I’ll go fix some tea for us all,” she says quietly, squeezing my hand briefly before slipping out of the room.
“Aimee.” I hear the voice again, the one that I vaguely recognized that pulled me out of the darkness. But this time, I know that it’s coming from the woman sitting beside me. It’s coming from my mother. I open my eyes again, figuring that she’s just repeating my name as she has done before, but when I look at her I see that her gaze don’t have that absent quality that I’ve become accustomed to. They’re vibrant and questioning and alive.
“Mom?” I ask, barely able to breathe with the thought that she might be back.
“Hi, baby girl,” she says, reaching up a tentative hand to stroke my hair like she did when I was a child.
I’m struck dumb by what I’m seeing and feeling. Something that I never thought would be possible has happened.
“But, how?” I ask, frowning at her, utterly baffled.
“I found my way back to you,” she says, smiling softly, her eyes bright with tears that she hasn’t cried.
“I don’t understand,” I say, shaking my head.
“It’s a little miracle,” Sally supplies helpfully as she comes back into the room with a tray giving off wafting aromas of various teas. “It’s about time we had one here, don’t you think?” she asks, taking my mother’s hand in one of hers and my hand on her other side.
“Sally, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry,” I say, trying to stop myself from breaking down again. I don’t know if I even have any more tears to cry.
“It’s not your fault,” she tells me quietly, squeezing my hand a little tighter.
“I tried,” I assure her. I need her to believe me. “I really did.”
“We know,” my mother replies, stroking my hair again from root to tip.
“But Jake doesn’t, he thinks… I don’t know what he thinks.” I sigh, wishing more than anything that I did know and that I didn’t feel this emptiness inside of me.
“It’s not over yet,” my mother says, looking between Sally and me.
We sit in silence, the three of us, one that lost her husband to the Angels, one that has lost her son, and one that has lost the love of her life. I remember what Crystal said to me, about us, the women, being strong because we’re the ones left behind.
I feel a thin sliver of hope, of possibility breaking through the throbbing the pain in my head and jaw. The Feds were still investigating the Angels and they knew that I wanted to help them. I’ll do anything that I have to, anything that I can— perhaps some things that I never thought I could do—to rid Painted Rock of the Angels and to find the man that has become my home.
“I’m going to get him back, Sal,” I say, my voice sounding stronger than I thought it could. “Mom’s right.” I look at the woman who is almost a stranger, but who has come back to me at last. “It’s not over; I’m going to bring him back,” I repeat. After all, we’ve had one miracle—there’s no reason that we don’t deserve another.