Until Dark - Mariah Stewart [128]
“Did Kendra think it was crazy?”
“No. She always believed. She thought it would be fun, you know, to know what people thought, what they were going to say before they’d say it.” She shook her head. “It wasn’t always fun. Sometimes the visions, the dreams, scared me. Sometimes it was terrible to hear the thoughts other people had in their heads.”
She pressed her hands to the sides of her head.
“Sometimes it just hurt too much to hear. To see.” She closed her eyes. “So I just refused to let it in, as much as I could refuse. As much as I could block it from my consciousness, I did. But sometimes something got past me. This man—Peter, he called himself at the shelter—got past me. I knew there was someone at Father Tim’s who was bringing all the darkness, but I’d blocked out the ability to see and to hear for so long, I couldn’t trust what I saw.”
Selena looked back at the house. “Until I saw the flames around the house, saw Kendra’s face in the water . . . then I trusted.”
“And by calling Father Tim, you saved her home from being totally destroyed.”
“None of it should have happened at all.”
“Maybe there are some things that no one could have prevented.” Adam shook his head. “You’ve nothing to regret, Selena. Nothing to feel guilty about.”
She stared at him for a long moment, then got into her car, and turned around in the dirt driveway, her tires sending up a cloud of dust as she headed for the road.
Adam watched her drive off, then turned back to the house for one last look. Kendra would want to know everything, he knew.
He walked around the house, taking note of the broken windows here, the unbroken ones there, wishing there was something he could salvage for her at that moment, something tangible to bring to her to reassure her that her family home still stood. He’d started toward his car when the breeze picked up and the woody arms of the lilac that grew near the front corner of the house began to wave, as if beckoning him.
Sections of the bush were covered with debris, and several long branches were crushed on the ground, where ladders had been pushed up against the side of the house and firemen had trampled whatever was necessary to put out the blaze. But the branches farthest from the window still bore flowers, and Adam reached up a long arm to bring a few of the tallest ones to eye level. The blooms had just opened, and he had to hold them right up close to his nose to catch the fragrance over the stench of burnt wood. With his Swiss Army knife, Adam cut as many branches as his arms could hold, and carried them to his car.
It was all he could find to bring to her that had not been damaged. He hoped it would be enough to set her mind at rest.
“Mancini still in there?” Adam asked the agent who sat outside Kendra’s door.
“Left about ten minutes ago.” The agent nodded toward Kendra’s room. “I think they gave her something to make her sleep.”
“Swell,” Adam muttered under his breath as he opened the door and walked into the darkened room. The drapes had been pulled over, and all the lights were out except those directly over the bed. In their glow, Adam could see that Kendra’s eyes were closed. She smiled and sniffed the air as he drew closer to the bed.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, her voice still little more than a gasp. “Lilacs!”
She opened her arms as far as she could without knocking out the IVs, held up her casted hands, several fingers in splints, and reached for the flowers.
“I didn’t realize I’d cut so many,” Adam told her apologetically.
“I want them,” she said, and he lowered the enormous mound of branches into her outstretched arms. She gathered them to her body and buried her face in the blooms. “Oh, they’re wonderful. You’re wonderful.”
“I cut them from the tree next to your house.”
“The one near the front?”
“Yes.”
She raised