Page 132 of The Savior

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

An antiseptic smell coaxed Chelsea awake, but it was a slice of bright light that finally pulled her eyes open. Then pain throbbed.

She fought against the hurt and found her bearings. The light was coming from the space between the hospital curtains.

Chelsea closed her eyes and rolled over. Once her equilibrium settled again, she opened her eyes. The overhead lights were turned off, and the busy sound of a hospital emergency room came into focus, and she touched the thick bandages on her neck. The day came rushing back.

Oh, she ached. Her wound pulsed, and if she turned the wrong way, tape pulled at her skin.Can’t I get a pain killer?

Then the overwhelming recollection of Zee Zee Mars zapped the last of her strength, churning her stomach. But the threat of another bombing hadn’t made her nauseous. Zee Zee believed that they were related.

That they were sisters…

Every bombing had been nothing but a plea for attention from a mother who had given up a child.

How would her mother feel? Chelsea wondered if that was the first time she’d thought of that question. The selfishness made her sick, then an unfamiliar need to speak with her mother made her sit up.

The phone in her emergency room bay wasn’t easy to reach, but she grasped it and eased back onto the bed. After a failed attempt to reach an outside line, she connected with the operator and convinced the woman to patch her through to the same phone number Chelsea had had as a child.

After three long rings, her mother answered with prim perfection that had haunted her for decades. “Kilpatrick residence. Hello?”

“Mom?” she croaked through a mixture of emotion and a dry throat.

After a long pause, her mother said, “Chelsea?”

Tears pooled in her eyes and slipped free. Years of resentment and frustration fizzled away with her new understanding, and she didn’t know where to start. “I’m so sorry.”

“Chelsea?” Worry poured through the phone. “Is that you?”

Her eyes squeezed shut, and she nodded. “I didn’t know.”

“Know what? Are you okay?” her mother asked, then muttered, “I always knew that job would get you hurt one day.”

There was no other way to ask what she needed to know, and she blurted out, “Did you have a baby before me?”

Her mother gasped then scolded her, “Young lady—”

Chelsea sniffled. “I met her today.”

The silence on the phone line was a powerful answer, then her mother whispered, “You can’t understand. You—” Another painfully long pause. “I couldn’t bring a baby into the hell I lived in.”

Chelsea didn’t know what to say.

“She went to a good place. A good home.” The only emotion that Chelsea had ever heard from her mother cracked. “I was—I—”

“You were just a child,” Chelsea offered.

“Is she…”

Her mother didn’t finish the question, and Chelsea wasn’t sure where her thoughts were going.All right? Alive? A victim? A criminal? Dead?

Finally, Chelsea promised, “She’s going to be all right.”

Zee Zee would likely go to prison or maybe a psych facility, but she’d get her mother’s attention.

No one could erase the past, but maybe this was the start of a healing process. “Mom?”

After a painfully long wait, her mother whispered, “Yes?”

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