Page 24 of It's You
“I want an MRI.”
Willow nodded. “I agree. It’s time.”
“How soon can you book it?”
“Monday in North Conway. I’ll pull strings if I have to. We have to see what’s going on up in there.” She pointed to Darcy’s head, giving her friend a brave smile.
Darcy’s shoulders fell, and tears filled her eyes.
“Hey,” said Willow, reaching out her hand to rub Darcy’s arm. “It’s going to be okay. We’ll figure it out.”
Darcy nodded, biting her lip.
“What else?” asked Willow softly.
“Jack,” she breathed, looking up at her friend with watery eyes. “Just…Jack.”
“It must be hard to get your head around it. I guess you still have feelings?—”
“Twenty years, Will. I don’t think I’d ever stopped hoping that I’d see him again.”
“Yeah. I could see it on your face.”
“But now he’s back and…I’m so…”
Willow patted Darcy’s arm and slid off the window seat, taking a blanket off the back of the couch and handing it to Darcy.
“Take a rest. It’s been a long day. We’ll get that test on Monday.”
Darcy watched her friend walk into the kitchen, then spread the blanket over her body, leaning back on the plush pillows and closing her eyes. She remembered the way her body shuddered as she covered his fist with hers. How hot and liquid and alive she’d felt touching him. Suddenly, she felt the swirling inside and placed her mug on the windowsill just in time.
She went inside.
When she opened her eyes,the first thing she saw was snow.
Snowflakes drifted from the white sky, falling into her hair, onto her eyelashes, landing softly on her cheeks. But they weren’t cold, and they didn’t melt. She breathed deeply, recognizing the sweet, delicate scent of crab apple blossoms. It wasn’t snow, after all. Tiny white petals floated softly down from a newly flowered tree overhead, covering her in a blanket of soft white.
She was lying down, her head and the top half of her body resting languorously on something warm and padded. As the seconds ticked by, she realized that her head rose and fell softly, as it would if she were lying on someone’s chest. She raised her hands over her head and her fingers curled into a bristly coat, which she would have examined had she not been distracted by the sound of low cooing.
She looked up to see a mourning dove, fat and brownish-gray, on a branch over her head.
Ooo-oo-ah-oo. Ooo-oo-ah-oo. The black wolf is back-ah-oo.
Darcy turned her head slowly and saw the black fur next to her shoulder. Before she could rouse herself any further, she heard the whispered words “I can’t do that” low and urgent in her head.
Her eyes flew open, and she was initially surprised that the brightness was gone. She was curled up on her window seat at home, twilight infringing. She touched a finger to her teacup, finding it cool. As she stretched her arms over her head, she furrowed her brows. Something immediate was bothering her.
And then it occurred to her.
After twenty years of hearing the whispered words “It’s you” at the end of her soul flight, the words inside had changed. “It’s you” were no longer the last words Jack Beauloup had uttered to Darcy Turner. The last words were now “I can’t do that” after Darcy had asked him to stay away from her. Darcy took a deep breath, sitting up and folding the blanket on her lap.
I’m sorry, Darcy. I’m so damn sorry. But I can’t do that.
As much as she hoped the MRI could calm her concerns, she knew deep in her heart it was almost certainly Jack, and Jack alone, who held the key to what was happening.
6
“Iam delighted to tell you that your frontal, temporal, occipital, and parietal lobes, in addition to your cerebellum and cortex, are—and don’t take this the wrong way—unremarkable.” Willow smiled at Darcy from behind the desk in her medical office located on Main Street in Carlisle.
