Chapter 17 - The Waking Light
When I stepped into Willa’s new room in the pediatric wing of Briarfield Memorial, the room was bathed in the warm, pale gold of the late afternoon sun breaking through the departing clouds.
The green hospital monitors were quiet, their displays showing steady, healthy rhythms.
Willa was sitting up against three pillows, a clean cotton bandage taped neatly over the sutures at her hairline. Beside her bed, holding her hand, was Brenda, who stood up and gave me a silent, tearful nod before stepping out into the corridor and pulling the door shut behind her.
Willa looked up.
Her dark eyes, so impossibly like Silas’s, were clear. The cloud of medication and trauma had lifted.
"Mom," she whispered.
I didn't speak. I crossed the room in two strides, sat on the edge of the mattress, and pulled my daughter into my arms.
I held her so tightly I could feel the steady, miraculous thump of her heart against my ribs. I buried my face into her hair, which still carried the faint, antiseptic trace of the hospital scrub, and let eighteen months of grief, fear, and battle-rage wash out of me in silent, cleansing tears.
"You got him," Willa murmured against my neck, her fingers curling into the wool of my jacket. "Iris called me on the room phone. She said you walked onto the stage with Ray Miller. She said Uncle Marcus had a megaphone."
I let out a wet, breathless laugh, pulling back just far enough to cup her pale cheeks in my hands. "Your Uncle Marcus is very dramatic when he wants to be."
Willa’s gaze drifted to the bedside table. Resting on the white laminate was Silas’s silver bracelet, cleaned and polished, sitting beside the cracked red notebook that contained her original investigative notes.
"Dad knew, didn't he?" she asked softly.
"He knew," I said. "He had the assays. He had the recordings. He hid them in the garage floorboards because he knew Kessler was dangerous, but he was trying to protect us from the crossfire."
"He didn't want us to live in fear," Willa whispered, her thumb tracing the silver links of her bracelet.
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"No, baby. He wanted us to live in the light." I kissed her forehead, right below the edge of the gauze. "And thanks to you, and Iris, and Marcus... the light is finally here."
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