Page 30 of Left Behind

The brothers panicked when they lost sight of Ghost, but Cameron didn’t hesitate. He knew his dog and just kept running in the direction they’d last seen him until he ran up on Ghost lying beside Shirley’s body.

“Oh my God! Mom!” Sean cried as they all rushed forward.

Cameron was already on his knees checking for a pulse. “She’s alive. Her pulse is steady.”

But it was Wiley who keyed in on the root of the problem. She was missing a shoe, and her foot and leg were already turning purple. Then he saw the missing shoe half-buried in a pile of leaves. When he went to pick it up, he discovered it was wedged beneath a protruding tree root.

“Look! She hung her toe and fell. From the looks of her foot and leg, she’ll be lucky if she didn’t break a bone. Check to see if she has any head injuries!”

Cameron ran his hand beneath her head. “I don’t feel anything obvious, but she could have passed out from the pain. Call Medi-Flight.”

But Aaron was already on it.

Sean was sick at heart. “This is my fault. I’m supposed to be watching out for her. Why the hell did she go all the way out here?”

Wiley frowned. “Sean! None of this is your fault. Mom is a grown woman. There will be a reason, and when we find out, it will make sense.”

“I hope so, because right now, none of this makes sense,” he said. Then his phone began to ring. “It’s Amalie,” he said, and answered, but all he could hear was the frantic tone in his wife’s voice and that she was skipping words as she spoke. He knew what this meant. She’d just had one of her visions, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying and put her on speaker. The moment he did, they all paused to listen. “Honey, slow down! I can’t understand you. Mom went missing. We just found her unconscious out in the woods behind the house.”

Amalie shuddered, then took a deep breath, making herself calm.

“That’s part of what I was trying to tell you. I was working in the office when I heard someone say my name. I looked up and Ella was standing in the doorway. She said, ‘Help Shirley,’ and then she blew me a kiss and disappeared.” At that point, Amalie burst into tears. “So now that you’ve found Shirley, someone needs to go to Ella’s house. I think she’s dead.”

Sean froze. “You’re serious?”

“Yes, I swear, I swear. She disappeared in front of my eyes. Just check on Ella, and call me when you get Shirley to the hospital.”

“Yes, yes, I will,” Sean said.

Cameron was sick to his stomach, thinking of the welfare check he was going to have to make, but right now, Shirley came first.

“Anybody got any water on them?” he asked.

Sean reached for the backpack he’d dropped and pulled out a bottle of water. As he was kneeling beside his mother’s body, he had a moment of déjà vu, remembering the day he’d found her sprawled out on their kitchen floor back in Conway, unconscious and bloody from the beating their father had given her. Then he shook off the memory, soaked his handkerchief with water, and began wiping her face and neck, repeating over and over, “Mom! Mom! Can you hear me? It’s Sean. Can you open your eyes for me?”

He dampened the handkerchief again, and this time gently wiped her lips, then her neck, and when she began to stir, he breathed a sigh of relief. “She’s coming to, but she’s going to be in agony,” he muttered.

The brothers knelt around her, holding her hands, patting her, and talking to her until she suddenly gasped and opened her eyes. The moment she did, the sound that came out of her mouth was a long, high-pitched cry of pain.

“Mom, it’s us. We’ve got you,” Wiley said. “Aaron called Medi-Flight. We’re going to have to carry you out, and it’s going to hurt.”

She moaned, clutching their hands so tightly that her knuckles went white.

“What happened, Mom? Why did you leave the house?” Sean asked.

Shirley moaned again. “Ella. Saw Ella…lost. Didn’t think. Just ran.”

Shock ran through every Pope there.

“What do you mean, you saw Ella?” Cameron asked.

Shirley grimaced as a wave of pain washed through her. “She was standing in the pasture looking toward the house. Too far from home. Went to check on her.”

The brothers eyed each other. It was as Wiley said. When they knew why she left, it would make sense, and it did.

“Did you talk to her?” Cameron asked.

Shirley started crying. “No, she disappeared.”

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