Between Darkness and Daylight (31 page)

"Oh no?" This was getting interesting.

"No." She shook her head. "He was just the one most willing to deal with all my issues. The one strong enough to love me even when loving me wasn't always the easiest or most clear-cut thing to do."

"Oh, Mom…" Nova threw her arms around her mother and cried as she returned the hug. She hadn't had a good crying jag since leaving New York. Not even when the tears had been right there earlier had she let them fall. But she let them fall now, hard and long. And once she thought she was done and had a hold on her emotions and voice, she pulled back and looked at her mother for a long, quiet moment, trying to draw from her strength and wisdom, wanting to find that special place of warmth and tranquility inside herself. "I hope I find someone like that for me."

"You already have, Nova. You just have to decide whether you're strong enough to love him and deal with all his issues."

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Chapter 19

Most of the flight out to North Carolina, Zane was assaulted with the ultimate teenager's weapon in an arsenal of how-to-get-even-and-turn-the-screws-real-good-and-tight-to-get-to-my-guardian: the infamous silent treatment. Ransom sat next to him, engrossed in one of his latest hip-hop CDs, headphones firmly in place over his ears, head bobbing up and down as he tuned out him for the duration.

Were it not for the crew, Zane would have had no meaningful human interaction during most of the flight out to his mother's. The kid was a master at ignoring him, that was for sure, but he decided it was just as well. The silence gave him more time to go over all that had gone wrong between him and Nova this past week, even more time to blame himself for letting her go so easily.

He could have heard her out, listened to what she had to say before shutting her down with his fear and ignorance. Hell, he was no better than a backwoods Bubba who still thought blacks were lazy, shiftless, and less useful than an old hound dog.

Zane leaned his head back against his seat and closed his eyes, dredging up different images of Nova in his house—wearing his shirt, beating the pants off him at Scrabble, cooking up breakfast in his kitchen before he'd rushed off to work.

Every image sent heat rushing to his groin, and seemed right, like she'd always been there with him, like she'd always belonged in his life and would always be in his life. He didn't regret his feelings for her; the need to elevate Sinny to sainted untouchable status compared to another woman wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been directly after her death.

Did all this mean he was over her?

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Zane swallowed hard, turning the ring on his finger, sliding it to the knuckle and back down before turning it again. It had never felt so heavy and stifling, so out of place.

He opened his eyes and turned his head to catch Ransom peering at him.

"You okay?"

Zane smiled at the irony of having the shoe so firmly placed on the other foot. "I'm fine."

"Oh. Just wondering."

"How about you?"

Ransom shrugged and pulled the headphones off his head, settling them around his neck. "Okay, I guess."

"Ran, are you really okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, about Nova's leaving."

"Hey, it's your party. Who am I to tell you who to invite?"

"Could you stop being a smart-ass for one minute and just give me an honest answer?"

"Why should I? You don't want to hear what
I
have to say."

He'd thought he and Ransom had gotten past this constant bickering and disagreeing, but evidently not. And the main sticking point now was something over which even Zane was kicking himself, so he certainly didn't need a thirteen-year-old smart mouth to remind him of what an idiot he'd been handling his love life.

Zane took a deep breath and wiped a hand across his face before glaring at his nephew.

He was almost tempted to remind the kid of Nova's last words to him before she'd left—
Go easy on him—
but didn't want to stoop that low. He settled instead for the truth. "Ransom, I'm trying to deal with this the best way I can. I don't know what else you want me to do."

"Whatever it takes."

"You make it sound so simple." Zane grinned weakly. "You'd have me compromise my principles? My beliefs?"
Forget how nervous seeing that
picture made me?

"I know why you're afraid," Ransom blurted. "At first I was afraid too."

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"What are you talking about, Ran?"

"The sketch. You found it didn't you?"

Zane's eyebrows shot up. Was everybody in on the big cosmic joke but him? "What do you know about that?"

"I saw it."

"And?"

"And Nova explained it to me."

"She did, did she?"

"Yeah. And I believe her."

He would have loved to have been a fly on the wall at that little pow-wow. "And when were you going to let me in on this?"

"It wasn't anything you needed to know right then."

"And who died and made you my keeper?"

"The same person who died and made you mine, okay?"

Zane closed his eyes and sighed. This conversation was taking them nowhere except in circles, like a dog after its tail. In the end, he knew the truth as well as Ransom did. He was just too stubborn and suspicious to admit it to himself, to admit it to his nephew: he was in love with Nova.

"She saved your life, Uncle Zane. That's got to be worth at least a second chance."

It was worth more than a second chance, but he wasn't so sure that he deserved to be with her when he hadn't been willing to hear her out and give her just one chance to explain.

"I know how you feel about her."

"Mind your own business." He playfully cuffed Ransom and the boy chuckled, sliding his headphones back up to his ears and bopping his head to the hip-hop beat of his CD.

* * * *

When the plane touched down at Raleigh/Durham International, Ransom had warmed up considerably. Zane was sure the imminent arrival at his Gram Addie's helped to defrost the ice he'd erected around his heart since Nova's departure.

By the time they'd retrieved their bags and headed to the car rental counter, he no longer cared why the boy had returned to halfway human 218

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form, only that he had. They wouldn't have to start off their holiday at his mother's on the wrong foot.

Zane had grown up knowing too many families who exchanged

punches and insults at Christmas instead of gifts. Not that his family had been the Waltons; he'd just never had to experience that sort of animosity coming up, and he didn't want to start now.

"I hope you got us a cool ride." Ransom skipped ahead as he got the keys and headed to the lot to retrieve his car. "Cool, your name's up on the board in lights."

"Hey, I've hit the big time."

Ransom laughed as Zane spread his arms and stopped in front of a blue late-model Camry. "Ah, now this is tight."

Zane smiled, shaking his head as they got in the car. "You kids and your slang."

Ransom immediately engaged his seatbelt and pointedly looked at him as if to say:
“You’re putting yours on too, aren’t you?”
Reluctantly, Zane pulled the seat harness across his chest and locked himself in.

He knew it was a bad example to set in front of the kid, but he didn't usually use a seatbelt, especially for so short a ride. Ever since his illness had landed him in the hospital, where the only restraint had been coming face to face with his mortality and the limitations his illness had set on his life, he hadn't liked the sensation of being confined.

"Now we can go," Ransom said, kicking back in his seat.

Zane smiled as he pulled out of the lot, figuring his discomfort was a small price to pay for the kid's peace of mind.

His discomfort turned out to be the least of his worries. He’d turned onto the street and gone only a few yards from the lot when another car careened toward him.

Zane had a second to hit the brakes and throw his free arm out in front of Ransom's chest before the car slammed into theirs and put their seatbelts to the test.

A fender bender.
That was his first thought once his car came to a complete stop and the gears ceased grinding, but Zane had a weird sense of drifting out and over his body. He knew he wasn't dead, didn't even feel any pain. Then again, that could have been a sign that he was beyond it.

"Uncle Zane? Uncle Zane!"

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He wouldn't have been able to hear Ransom beside him if he were dead, would he?

The vibrations started then, riding up from his legs to his torso until a tingling warmth engulfed his entire body. He'd felt this way—

disconnected and weightless—only twice in his life: in the hospital, when he'd gone under the anesthesia right before the bone marrow transplant, and years later when someone had hurled the rocks through his apartment windows and he'd knocked Nova to the floor in his loft.

He heard the door opening on the driver's side, felt Ransom leaning over him from the passenger side.

"Uncle Zane, please open your eyes. Wake up!"

He opened his eyes, stared straight ahead and saw Nova, bent at the waist and cradling her middle with an arm as she sat at a dining room table. He thought he was re-experiencing their lunch episode at the food court after the rock climbing trip; she had that same shocked, pained expression on her face. But this kitchen was in a house, and more brightly lit, with homespun touches of color and accessories throughout. He caught a plaque on the wall over the table. Why did the words, describing the road to peace, seem so familiar to him, as if he'd grown up reading them again and again?

"Geesh, I hope he's all right. But you guys just came out of nowhere, I
didn't see you…"

Zane turned to his nephew and focused on the teen's face. "Thanks for making me put on the seatbelt, Ran."

Ransom threw his arms around his uncle's neck and clung tight until the other driver eased them apart.

"Hey fella, I really got somewhere to be. Can we get this over with and exchange information so we can both be on our way?"

* * * *

Ransom got to stay with his uncle the entire time the emergency room staff examined him, watching as the nurses and doctors poked and prodded him. After a couple of hours, he left to get a soda and hurried back, standing like a sentry at the door as an intern looked at Uncle Zane's eyes with a penlight and made him follow his finger with his eyes.

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He figured the guy must be about near the end of his rope, because
he
certainly was. Ran felt his uncle's tension all the way at the doorway and was just waiting for the moment when he would make a fuss about having to stay for further observation. He'd actually been making a fuss since they arrived; the only reason he'd come in the first place was because Ransom had begged him. But the clincher had been his threat to tell Gram Addie.

That had done it. For some reason, Uncle Zane didn't want Gram to know worse than he didn't like hospitals. Go figure.

Ransom sidled to the bed where his uncle sat with his legs dangling over the side, waiting for his chance to jet. "How's it going, old dude?"

"Do me a favor and shoot me now for letting you talk me into this."

"You scared me," Ransom blurted. Sheesh, he hadn't meant for it to come out like that, but now that it had, he was glad. Maybe his uncle would listen to reason.

Fat chance.

"Where's my shirt?"

"Over on the chair."

"Could you get it, please, so I can get out of here."

"The doctor's worried because you blacked out. He said—"

"Ran, I know what the doctor said. But I'm fine. They took x-rays and nothing's broken. I don't even have a concussion like they first thought."

"But—"

"Besides, your Grams is waiting for us. I don't want to keep her any longer. Would you just help me get out of here, please?"

Uncle Zane looked at him with this anxious expression on his face, as if staying in the room another minute terrified him. Ransom wondered at that. What was the big deal?

The doctor came in the room just then, as if to save Ran from trying to further convince his uncle to stay for more tests.

"I have good news, Mr. Youngblood—"

"Tell my nephew I'm good to go, doc?"

"Clean bill. The soreness is probably from where the seatbelt pressed into your shoulder, chest, and hipbone. You might even see some bruising in the next day or so. But Motrin should help with the pain."

Zane gave him a smug look. "You see?"

Ransom stuck out his tongue.

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His uncle laughed. "Let's get out of here."

* * * *

You scared me…

Zane had scared himself, thought he'd been about to see his maker.

And over something so minor.

Like people hadn't died from less?

But seeing Nova, clear as day outside the car windshield, close enough to touch, had creeped him out as badly as if she had been Moses coming down from the mountain with the infamous tablets, claiming to have spoken to God.

There was no getting around it: either there was something seriously wrong with him, or she had been telling the truth. And not only was she receiving visions, but she was sending them…to him. He didn't dare explore the third option, that
he
was having visions.

Either way, something wasn't quite right anymore with how he was perceiving his world, with signals and sensations coming from sources he'd never before envisioned.

He wondered where she was now, what she was doing, that flash of her at the lot whetting his appetite for her company—her voice, her soft skin, her understanding dark eyes.

What would he say to her if he had her on the phone, or if she was standing in front of him? Lie through is teeth the way he was lying to his mother right now?