Nothing happened.
Her sister didn’t gasp for breath. Her eyes didn’t fly open.
Crystal lay limp on the ground.
Bette’s fingers shook as she searched for a pulse —nothing.
She shifted her hands back to Crystal’s chest and repeated the compressions.
Bette pushed another two breaths into Crystal’s slack mouth and returned her hands to her sister’s chest. As she leaned down to start her third set of breaths, the shovel hit her square in the back. The impact made her head snap, and she bit her tongue painfully.
Before Hillary could hit her a second time, Bette fell forward, sprawling across Crystal’s lifeless body. The blade cut the air inches above her head.
Bette lurched sideways as Hillary arced the shovel a third time.
The woman’s eyes were puffy, the skin on her face shiny and raw. She gritted her teeth as she tightened her grip and stepped toward Bette, raising the shovel over her head. She’d positioned it so the tip pointed straight down at Bette’s chest.
Behind Hillary, at the edge of the clearing, Bette saw movement. She strained her eyes toward the figures and realized Weston was coming towards them, limping and bloody. A small girl with cascading black hair tugged on his hand as if encouraging him onward.
Bette kicked her legs out. Her feet connected with Hillary’s shins, but like a statue, the woman didn’t move. Barely a grimace crossed her mouth as the shovel started its downward spike.
Weston was nearly there now.
Bette screamed and tried to twist away as the shovel plunged toward her. She hunched forward and closed her eyes, expecting to feel the blade sink into her flesh.
It didn’t.
Above her, Hillary’s mouth dropped open, and she teetered sideways.
Bette scrambled away as the shovel dropped from Hillary’s hands. A plume of red blossomed on her white shirt.
Weston Meeks stood behind her, his face and neck slick with red, a blade, blood covered, clutched in his hand.
He gave a loud, grief-filled howl and sank the knife into Hillary’s back a second time.
Hillary twirled away from him, losing her balance and falling to one knee.
Weston collapsed onto his hands, heaving, blood dripping from his mouth into the dirt mound beside Crystal’s grave.
Hillary cried out and stumbled back to her feet. The dark blade of the knife stuck from her back. She stood, fell, and stood again, half running across the grassy space.
She stopped suddenly next to a mound of grass topped with a pile of rocks.
Bette watched, frozen, as Hillary dropped to all fours and collapsed facedown onto the mound.
“Crystal,” Weston’s voice bubbled.
Bette blinked, and managed to look at Weston. Unsteadily, she crawled back to her sister.
He rested a blood-smeared cheek on Crystal’s chest.
“Get help,” he mumbled. “Hurry.”
She shook her head.
“CPR. I have to do CPR…”
Weston slid off Crystal.
He thumped his palm against her chest, over and over.
“Go,” he gurgled.
Bette stood and started running away. She looked back, suddenly terrified that Hillary would have found her feet once more to return and finish them off.
Hillary lay still in the grass. Beside her, sat the little girl in the nightgown. She stroked Hillary’s blood-matted hair and gazed at her not with fear, but with love.
Bette turned and ran from the clearing.
54
Now
Crystal stepped to the edge of the cliff, Weston’s hand snug in her own.
He turned to face her, his eyes boring into hers with such intensity, she felt as if she could fly.
He slipped his hand away from hers.
“No,” she laughed. “Let’s jump holding hands.”
He kissed her nose, her mouth, and then shook his head. “Not this time. You’re not the only one in that body now. Time to move away from the cliff.”
He put a hand on her belly, flat and warm from their day in the sun.
She remembered the baby. How could she have forgotten? She and Weston were having a baby.
“Okay,” she agreed. “I’ll do the safe thing this time, but our little girl is going to be a cliff jumper.”
“Don’t I know it,” he said, kissing her again and taking a step back.
She reached out for him. He was too close to the edge, but he opened his arms like he might fly and fell backwards off the cliff.
“No," she cried out, running to the edge.
He hadn’t jumped out far enough. He might hit the rocks, but as Weston fell, he grew radiant — as if the sun shone from below him instead of above. Bright shimmering light, rather than the dark water of the lake, swallowed him whole.
Most would have considered the red-haired victim a lost cause, but paramedic Steve Fisher had been around a long time. More than once, he’d given CPR to children who’d turned blue or men who’d had heart attacks and were ice cold. More than once, they’d come back to life.
After twenty-three minutes of CPR, Crystal Childs took a tiny shuddering breath. A weak pulse began its rhythmic thrum beneath his fingers.
His partner, Orlando Tustin, didn’t have the same luck with the male victim. Although he was alive when they lifted him onto the stretcher, his blood pressure dropped rapidly on the short drive, less than a half mile, to the hospital.
When they wheeled him through the hospital doors, Weston Meeks was DOA.
“I finally got up the guts to kiss Brian and right then, as I was leaning forward, you and your friend Collet jumped out of the closet and yelled ‘Boo!’”
Crystal heard Bette’s words, but they seemed to come from some far-off place, a back room in a big empty mansion. Walls and hallways and heavy wooden doors between them.
“I was mortified,” Bette continued. “And your friend started singing, Brian and Bette sitting in the tree, but you grabbed her and ran. I chased you guys for two blocks. I was so mad, but when I got back, Brian kissed me right away. And later, I realized it was better because if you hadn’t spooked us, I would have kissed him, and it was way more fun to tell my school friends he kissed me.”
A splinter of light slipped beneath Crystal’s eyelids. She tried to open her eyes, but they didn’t budge.
“Anyway, I wanted you to know that I was happy you scared us,” Bette continued, her voice breaking. “It was such a little sister thing to do. And that’s why, on top of the other three hundred stories, I’ve regaled you with in the last forty-eight hours, I need you to be okay. Do you hear me, Crystal?”
Bette’s hands pressed into her right forearm. The touch was soft and warm.
Crystal tried again to open her eyes. They stayed closed, but she managed to wiggle her fingers.
“Did you see that?” another voice asked excitedly. It was her dad. “Bette, her hand just moved.”
“They did?” Bette demanded.
Crystal felt Bette’s fingers entwine with her own. She tried again to move them. When her thumb twitched, Bette gasped.
“Oh my God, they did. She’s waking up. Right? Is she waking up?” Bette’s voice boomed, no longer far away but so close Crystal flinched.
“Nurse, nurse,” her father yelled, followed by the slap of his shoes on the floor. “She’s waking up. Hurry, quick.”
Another woman’s voice joined Bette’s and her dad’s.
“Okay, calm down. We don’t want to get her excited.”