Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,66

pushing my baby out into a storm, wasn’t it? At least I had told my daughter which way to run. I had left Jenny alone in a sea of dangers, most of which I had stirred up. And I hadn’t even said goodbye.

I would have loved to grab the rope of time and reel back in all that had happened. Even if I couldn’t go back so far as to save my own life—run upstairs with my baby girl and survive the storm—why couldn’t I at least pull time backwards far enough to start over with Jenny? If I could begin again, arrive when she awoke in the bathtub, I could take more care. I would keep my sorrows and fears out of her way. And I would come to her only if she called me. I would never force myself on her again—she would have to invite me back.

Even if time could be moved like tugging a rope, it would certainly be a ponderous rope that stronger spirits than I found immovable. As I watched that single thread of lightning billow through the water above me like the aurora borealis, I imagined the heavy cord of time stretching away from me in the water like the hard, thick rope on a great ship. And I imagined it wavering, softening, then flattening into a ribbon.

If time was as thin and flexible as all that, I should be able to pull it with ease—I could unroll it from its spindle and be back with Jenny. I pictured the last time I had seen her—she’d been sitting on her bed, holding out the back of her hand that I might speak to her. I couldn’t hear her voice, but she might have been asking me a question that a Y or an N would have answered: Are you with me? Will you help me?

She was far away, but I could feel her lifting her hand to me now, waiting for me to speak. She needed to know: Am I crazy or are you real? Am I alone or will you come to me and help me?

Jenny was calling for me.

And I tried to write the letter that would reassure her. Two simple strokes that made a Y on her skin. Yes, I am real. Yes, I will help you. But my fingers were as still as a statue’s, white and lifeless, floating in the dark water.

I wished I could grasp that ribbon dangling in the flood and drag myself closer to her, because I felt as if her hand was tied or chained down. She couldn’t reach any farther—I needed to close the distance. And the questions she was asking me, she hung her life on them.

Do you care what happens to me? she was asking.

I could not see her—the water was too dark—but I felt her thoughts. Yes, I answered. And a ripple rolled away from my fingers. I had moved.

Are you there? she asked me.

Yes, I answered, and this time I saw my finger move. Yes. Two strokes that crossed. Yes, I am here. And I could feel the back of her hand. I wasn’t under water. I was standing in an unfamiliar living room.

To my horror Jenny was being held in a chair, physically bound by four women. Two held her wrists and legs and two pressed her shoulders to the back of the chair. And there was Cathy herself, sitting beside Jenny’s chair, looking uncomfortable but doing nothing to stop them.

“Dear God, spare us.” The woman who spoke stood over Jenny, holding a small pitcher in her hands as if it were a holy relic. She was the one who had watched Jenny from across the aisle in church.

“Dear God,” the other women repeated. “Spare us.” Cathy was the only one who didn’t mimic these words.

Jenny held her eyes closed and squeezed the tears back. She trembled and strained with her left hand to raise it to my touch.

I drew my Y on the back of her hand. Yes, I’m back.

She drew in a sharp breath and relaxed, as tears began to roll down her cheeks. I knelt in front of her chair. On her arm, next to the hands that were holding her down, I wrote love.

Jenny shuddered and let out a sigh.

I looked around at the frightened women holding Jenny down, and Cathy, appalled and yet merely watching, and the one woman who wasn’t scared glowering at Jenny with something akin to pleasure. I noticed the