The Lost Queen of Crocker County by Elizabeth Leiknes

Author:Elizabeth Leiknes [Leiknes, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Published: 2018-07-10T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

On my third day back in True City, I am getting what I deserve, but I need to get on with the business of unlikely miracles. I am alone on the road I travel, except for the white, porched farmhouses predictably placed every ten acres. It is midmorning, which means each house smells of bacon, pancakes, probably over-easy eggs—the second breakfast of the day for folks whose chores begin when the sky is still black as night.

But these are not the farmhouses I remember from my childhood. Not exactly. Back then, they seemed old, outdated, without individuality. Now, with eighteen years in between, they suddenly seem not old, but quaint. Not faceless, but teeming with life. Sleepy-eyed children in footy pajamas. Fathers with calloused hands, drinking from coffee cups stained with years of early mornings. Mothers wearing cardigans over their nightgowns.

An ache forms somewhere deep inside me, in the place where one misses those who have gone away and memories that will never repeat. I imagine myself in each little farmhouse, walking around in each kitchen, taking care of people. I imagine having a purpose.

Midway to the hospital, I open the car windows until the air rushes over me with a gust strong enough to remind me that I’m alive, but someone else is barely hanging on. I take the rich Iowa air deep into my lungs—air I’d recently discovered is capable of strange things, powerful things—and imagine breathing it into Bliss as a life force.

“Make it right,” I say out loud to nobody and everybody. Dad. Charlotte. Connor. Janelle.

Bliss.

When I arrive at the hospital as Kate Snelling, the nurses wave me past the front desk this time like I’m an old friend. Guilt and shame quietly twist and wrench in my gut as I walk toward Bliss’s room and try to play the part of a decent human being.

When I enter the room, I put down my bag, pull up a chair next to the bed, and get to work.

“Good morning, Bliss.”

I watch her breathe, and then after a few seconds, we synchronize. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. This conversation goes on for five minutes, until I get up the courage to change the subject.

“So how was your night?” I take my book out of my bag. “Quiet, huh?” I say, and lower my voice. “Well, that’s gonna change. One day soon I’ll say the right thing, that one perfect word, and out of nowhere you’ll answer and then…”

I let the words trail off, wishing them safe travels to wherever Bliss is. I remember my own words. Sometimes it’s a word or phrase that stirs something in the cerebral cortex. I ponder possible phrases that could inspire a person to awaken from a coma. It’s Monday. Nope. We need to talk. Definitely not. It’s time for dinner. She’s probably not hungry.

I stare at her beautiful face, wonder what her eyes look like. When I imagine what hope looks like there—how she looks at Harold Hill on stage, how she

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