009 Nowhere

(Cole)

I watch her fall in the flames. It’s horrifying.

“Maya… No!” My heart has seared with her.

How could she do this to me, to Owen?

How can Lucy be dead? I called the hospital. I checked in before the party and they said she was going well.

Maya’s made a crazy choice taking Lucy’s body with her. She’s denying Owen a healthy life.

The drugs, the drugs took her over, changed her.

I thought she loved us. I never meant to love her, but I did.

Jade rages and pounds her fists against my chest. “Get in there! Get in there and get that child from her!”

“It’s too late, Jade.”

Her voice cracks, jagged with panic. “I didn’t do all this work to miss out now! I need that spoilt brat’s body!”

I push Jade away so hard she falls backwards onto the grass.

“Don’t! Don’t you talk about Lucy like that!” I roar at her. “Was it you? Did you do what Maya said you did just to get the bone marrow?”

“Yes! Cole, I just can’t lose Owen. I can’t.” She begins to sob and cry uncontrollably.

I’ve known Jade forever. I thought she was my best friend.

I was so sure she wouldn’t harm anyone I loved on purpose.

I have proof of Maya’s drug use. Her father was an addict…

But it turns out, I was played by Jade from the start.

The roof of the mansion collapses.

The firefighters shove harder at me now, pulling me away, holding me there. There’s nothing I can do. I’ve lost them both now.

Maybe I should’ve told Maya the truth from the start. That I wasn’t looking for a marriage.

I wasn’t expecting to fall in love.

But I did. And now she’s gone.

I failed her. I failed them.

I abandoned my wife and daughter who needed me.

(Maya)

It is black.

I’m nowhere.

Not night, not sleep, not even death. Just nowhere.

I am standing in it, Lucy’s body in my arms. She is weightless and heavy all at once, her skin still, her curls damp against my wrist.

Her little hand is slack where it used to cling.

I press her to my chest and the emptiness presses back, crushing.

I scream and beg for her to be okay. To take me and not her. But I hear no sound. My voice doesn’t exist here. It’s in my head, not out loud.

I crush her to me and sob. I failed to protect her.

Now here I am. Only her. And me. And the end.

“Not yet.”

The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. Deep, endless, calm. It slices into the void like a command.

I look around, wild, but there is nothing to see.

“You will go back,” the voice says. “You will make it right. You will stop them this time.”

I choke, sobbing without tears. “I can’t. They already won. They took her, they took everything.”

“Then change it,” the voice answers. “You are not finished. She is not finished. Take this second chance.”

I clutch Lucy tighter. Her body is cold, but the words "second chance" linger inside me.

I don’t want to let her go, but the void begins to pull. My arms shake as I try to hold her against me.

I’m falling and I can’t hold her any longer.

The darkness changes. The air changes. She’s gone from my arms. If I ever see her again, I swear I will make it right.

And then—

I wake choking.

My throat is raw, my lungs scrubbed empty. I suck in the air, gasping, coughing until the room spins and steadies again.

For a moment I don’t know where I am.

Panic crushes down. My hands reach for her, but they’re empty. Did I fail? Did I drop her?

No, she disappeared. I remember burning and then falling. Oh God, am I in Hell?

Am I doomed to relive losing Lucy for eternity?

How can my eyes be opening now?

I burned with Lucy’s body in my arms. I know it. The fire ate us both. I saw it. I felt it.

How can I be here… alive… in my bedroom?

The walls are the same. The curtains, the dresser, everything.

No. This is wrong. This is impossible. A voice fills my head with the words ‘second chance.’

I stumble from the bed, heart pounding, vision swimming. I head straight for the crib. My heart is pounding as I cross the room.

Please. Please let her be there.

Let the voice that said I had a second chance be real.

I held her while she took her last breath.

I suffered through all those days of taunts from Jade, the lies, hearing how she’d taken it all from me. I watched my daughter die.

Did I dream it? Was it the drugs Jade forced into me? Was it madness?

The crib is exactly where it should be. My eyes lock onto her. I suck in a deep breath and just hold it.

Lucy is alive. Not still, not pale, not wired to machines.

She is up on her feet, hair in a wild halo of curls, slapping the bars with her palms and laughing at nothing.

The sound breaks me open.

I stagger to her, legs shaking. I can barely feel the ground under me. When she sees me, her little face lights up. She grins and reaches.

For a split second, my mind doesn’t believe what my eyes see.

My arms hesitate, like they’re scared of clutching air, of proving this a hallucination. My hands hover, trembling, before I finally scoop her up.

The warmth of her almost floors me. She wriggles, impatient to be free and run, her little voice babbling against my shoulder.

It’s real. The tiny huffs of her breath against my neck. The heat of her skin. The sound of her heartbeat pressed to mine.

I collapse back against the crib, sliding down to the floor with her clutched tight. Tears pour down my cheeks. My body shakes with each sob.

I can’t stop touching her. My hands trace her back, her arms, her cheeks. I kiss the soft space between her eyes, the curve of her ear, the crown of her head.

She squirms and pushes at me. But I just need a little longer to understand what is happening.

Images crash through me. Her body in my arms. The flames. The smoke. My decision to take her with me so Jade couldn’t touch her again.

And now this.

I bury my face in her neck. She’s here, she’s real.

Her voice. I never thought I would hear it again.

“Mama.”

“Yes darling,” I whisper fiercely, holding her tighter. “I’m here. They’ll never get near you again.”

She wriggles, making small, frustrated sounds, I put her on the floor and watch her toddle over to her toys.

What day is it?

I drag myself to the nightstand, grab my phone, and fumble it awake.

The date stares back at me.

It’s before the divorce. Before the paternity lie. Before Jade had me committed. Before Lucy was taken and used until there was nothing left of her.

My whole body seizes with the enormity of it.

The second chance.

It’s real.

Somehow, impossibly, I am back.

And this time, they will pay.