pain, so much endless pain…
The doctor at her feet, a nurse holding her hand, without them she would be all alone.
She is drowning in a haze of pain.
A high-pitched and beautiful cry pierces the haze and the doctor holds up the little thing as if she were a trophy.
“A little girl,” the nurse says, calmly patting Jessica’s head even though Jessica has been squeezing her hand mercilessly through the last bits of the labor.
“A redhead,” the doctor adds with a grin.
Jessica drinks in the sight, chubby belly, squinty eyes, a sprinkle of bright red hair.
Another nurse takes the baby to wash her.
“Do you want to hold her?” the nurse asks.
Jessica shakes her head, unable to speak.
“You want her to go right to her adoptive mom?” the nurse asks kindly.
Jessica manages to fight every instinct in her body to nod again, reminding herself that she cannot care for a child alone. She is bringing happiness to a couple chosen by the agency. She is bringing life into the world. This is her reward for the pain of losing her.
The second nurse begins to leave with the baby.
“Wait,” Jessica remembers. “Wait, I have something for her.”
“Where is it, dear?”
“In-in my bag,” she says, waving at the corner. “There’s an envelope.” Did she ever have something so mundane as a pocketbook? Did she walk in here like a regular person? Now she would always be a ghost of herself.
While the nurse who held her hand rifles through her bag, the one holding the baby comes close to wait.
Jessica doesn’t have the strength to resist soaking in the beautiful sight of her daughter once more. She extends her hand to touch the tiny fist and then caress a soft cheek.
The baby smiles.
She has a dimple on her left cheek, like Jessica does.
“Wow, she’s smiling,” the nurse holding her says in awe.
“Miranda,” Jessica says, breathing the name she would have given to the girl.
“Babies this young can’t smile - it’s probably just gas,” the other nurse replies, returning with the envelope. “But I’m glad you got to see it, dear. Are you still sure about all this?”
Jessica closes her eyes, tears leaking from them as she nods.
She doesn’t look as they take her daughter away. In the envelope is a locket, it belonged to her grandmother - the baby’s great-grandmother. One day, when she is older, the little girl will ask her real mother about the woman who gave birth to her. Jessica is glad to know that her mother will have something beautiful to give her on that day, something to make her know to her bones how much she is loved.
In the waiting room, Jessica opened her eyes, shaken to the core by the return of this unexpected echo from her past.
Sorrow washed over her like a weight she had been carrying without even knowing.
No wonder she had asked that fae queen to take her memories.
She shot out of her chair, restless with the recovered knowledge that she had a daughter. They had a daughter. And she was out there. Somewhere.
“Miss, do you want your tea?” the nurse called after her, but Jessica didn’t even turn around.
Red hair, a dimple, a locket, all of it seemed familiar, seemed…
She stopped in the center of the hallway, thunderstruck.
The woman on the news.
The woman had red hair and a locket and the dimple… It had been twenty-five years… She would be…
“Miranda,” Jessica said.
The kind nurse must have told the baby’s adoptive mother the name Jessica had thoughtlessly murmured as they took the baby away.
And the mother must have honored her wish, even though she’d never asked, and named the baby Miranda.
“I have to find her,” she said to herself as she paced down the hallway again.
“Hey, where did you go?” Cullen’s voice seemed to come out of nowhere, startling her.
She opened her mouth and closed it again, not sure where to begin. It was too much.
“Come on, I’m buzzing with power,” he told her “Let’s go find my brothers and seal the deal. You can tell me what’s up on the way.”
17
Cullen
Cullen drove quickly, unsure of where he was going, only knowing that he had to find his brothers while this surge of power was still alive inside him.
Jessica sat beside him, silently gazing out the window.
She seemed a little off. She had wandered off at the hospital and then gaped at him when he found her like she’d forgotten the whole reason they were back in the mortal realm.
“Are you okay?” he asked her gently.
Out