The incessant, unrelenting, excruciating pain.
For some reason he couldn’t open his eyes. Something had glued them shut. He forced himself to listen, to make out even the faintest sounds, but Owen’s voice had faded and all that was left were the surges of his pounding blood and rapidly beating heart. Mercifully, that one sound told him he was still alive. For the moment.
Just as Jack’s mind was beginning to ease away the fuzzy edges of confusion, a searing, debilitating pain shot across his forehead, making him feel as if his eyes had just been scorched out of their sockets.
Everything went black. Jack was floating in the galaxies again.
* * *
SOPHIE MATTUCHI HAD a little over an hour before she began her weekend night shift as a cardiac nurse in the ER at Indian Lake Hospital. Sophie had signed on for the extra hours because the ER was shorthanded and because she saw the need. Sophie always saw the need.
Although it was an unusually foggy evening, she pulled on her running shoes, determined to fit in a run around the three-mile running trail that circled the lake. It had been a rainy and cold early June, and before that, she’d felt as if winter would never end after a record four-foot snow pack that stayed until late March. Still, she hadn’t missed a single day’s run since she’d taken up the sport two years ago to keep her weight under control and her mind off Louise Railton’s extra creamy homemade ice creams. The city had installed LED street lights all along the trail that allowed fanatics like Sophie to run in just about any kind of weather.
Sophie had invested in the best running shoes, clothing and gadgets to track her fitness, and she’d downloaded motivational podcasts to listen to while she ran. There was nothing like starting her workdays or evenings with inspiring mantras to help her reinvent her life.
And these days, she was all about reinventing, restructuring, realigning and rebooting Sophie.
Ever since she’d kissed a very reluctant Scott Abbot in first grade, Sophie had been labeled the town flirt. For most of her life, she hadn’t minded the moniker at all. She liked boys. A lot. She liked flirting and dating and being around men. She liked living in a man’s world and she liked being as good as any man in her job. Sophie thought that men were more interesting than women, or at least she’d been telling herself that since high school because she’d never had many girlfriends. She was too busy dating two, three, four different guys in a single week. Sophie always took it upon herself to explore whatever world it was that her newest guy was into. Baseball, football, track, cars, boating, weight lifting. She didn’t care. They liked her because she was “interested” and she loved their attention. The truth was that Sophie learned to be good friends—and often more—with all the guys she knew. They liked holding her hand and stealing kisses on the Tilt-A-Whirl at the county fair.
However, the moment anything started to get serious, Sophie moved on. It had been the only way to handle her life when she was in school. She’d been dead set on obtaining her degree, and nothing and no one could stand in her way.
When she graduated, she’d spent a year at a hospital in Grand Rapids then moved back in with her parents to help them with her aging grandmother. What Sophie thought was going to be a single summer at home while she applied to top hospitals in Chicago and Indianapolis had evolved into an entire year. One year had turned into five. Her biggest surprise had been landing her dream job with Dr. Caldwell and Nate Barzonni.
In all that time, Sophie’s modus operandi for dealing with men never changed. She was an expert at getting a man’s attention, but once she’d landed him, she threw him back. Catch and release.
Sophie had come to realize that her commitment phobia and the lighthearted, devil-may-care persona she put on for the world to see, was just flat boring. Like a hamster in a cage, she was spinning her wheels and getting nowhere with her life.
The problem was that in a small town where everyone knew everyone’s business and had very long memories, her flirtatious ways had caused her to lose many people’s respect. And that was unacceptable to her.
Sticking her earbuds in her ears, Sophie smiled to herself. She bent down to press her nose to her knees as she clasped the backs of her thighs. She’d made some real changes over the past year.
Running had become nirvana for her and for the first time she had the body she’d always wanted. These days when she got depressed, she headed for the lake trail instead of a dish of Louise’s salted caramel and pecan ice cream. Her favorite store now was the organic farmer’s market. She had stamina that she hadn’t known before, and her weekend shifts at the ER, which could run as long as eighteen hours, didn’t compromise her regular weekday workload helping Dr. Nate Barzonni with heart surgeries.
Despite all these changes, Sophie hadn’t yet gotten a handle on love. She had no earthly idea how she’d overcome her bad habits, phobias and insecurities, but this was the year she’d start trying. Her self-help podcasts promised she could make it happen. She had to think differently and then she’d be able to make the right choices. She had to trust in the universe. Believe in the laws of attraction. Be the master of her own fate. Write her own script...
Her cell phone blared with an ambulance siren alert. It could only mean the ER was calling.
Sophie halted her run before it even started. She whipped the cell out of her shorts’ pocket. “Mattuchi here.”
The excited woman’s voice on the other end said, “How fast can you get here? We have a multiple-car accident on its way in from Highway 421. Possible DOA.”
“I’m there,” Sophie shouted into the phone, already sprinting toward her car.
JACK CRAWLED OUT of the rabbit hole. Or maybe it was some kind of wartime trench. Lights were flashing like mortars and bombs exploded. But this wasn’t war. He’d never been in a war, though he’d seen those kinds of movies. Maybe he was in a movie. No. Impossible. This wasn’t the drainage tunnel either, because they’d moved him out of that.
But who were “they”?
“Can you hear me, Mr. Carter?” a woman asked in the softest, most melodious caress of a voice he’d ever heard. It came to him like the peals of church bells tumbling through a mountain valley, distant yet beckoning.
It had happened. He’d died. Life was over. Pfft. Just like that. And this voice was that of the angel sent from heaven or the beyond to take him to his new life. He was struck by the utter finality of it all.
A thousand regrets fluttered across his heart. Jack never thought of himself as a family man, but the first person he pictured was his sister, Ava. He’d never see her again. Nor his brother-in-law and business partner, Barry. Would Ava be okay without her big brother Jack to watch out for her? Would Barry be able to handle the company without Jack’s guidance? And what about his niece, Kaylee? She wasn’t even a year old yet. He’d arranged for a bank account in her name to start her college fund. Ava and Barry were planning to come to Indian Lake for Katia’s wedding. Jack had hoped to talk them into moving here. Or had he already done that?
Facts tumbled into Jack’s brain like slow-falling snow. No, Ava and Barry still lived in Chicago, but Katia said she missed Ava a great deal and had investigated housing options for them, should they decide to make the move.
Now that Jack believed he was dying, he wished he’d pressed the issue more. He’d missed six months
