My whole world hurt, a screaming, almost blinding pain. It was pain unlike anything I’d ever experienced—save once before.
A hand squeezed my shoulder and Jacqueline’s encouraging voice faded from my ears as I looked up, expecting to see Thom standing beside me.
The trim, dark-haired figure wasn’t my husband, though—it was our son, a boy who’d become a young man without our being here to watch.
“Don’t worry, Mom,” he said, fingers squeezing again. “He’s coming.”
“He shouldn’t be,” I croaked. “He should stay where he is.”
“He didn’t miss it for me, did he?”
“He very nearly did,” I said, gritting my teeth as another contraction hit. “He should have stayed in bed that time, too, but he wouldn’t listen. J.T. brought him. I was too tired to be angry.” Too happy to be angry, too much in awe of what we’d created. I reached up and squeezed my son’s arm. “You don’t have to stay.”
“I want to. You waited almost eighteen years to give me a little brother or sister. I don’t want to miss a second that I don’t have to.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, dimly aware that Jacqueline was telling me to push. Bizarrely, I found myself missing Ériu, who had gone to her rest some years before. J.T. had told me about it—he’d actually shed a few tears when she’d said good-bye, leaving him with a promise that they’d see each other again someday.
“Almost there, Mar. One or two big pushes.”
I sucked in a breath and steeled myself for the last and worst of it. My son took my hand and squeezed.
“It’s okay, Mom,” he whispered. “It’s going to be okay.”
I gasped softly in pain as Tala’s hand spasmed around mine. I jerked back to myself, blinking back stinging tears that had come from nowhere.
“One or two more, Tala. You can do it.”
I shivered at Jacqueline’s words, so like what she’d said to me in the vision.
“Kurt and Gwen,” Tala whispered to me through gritted teeth. “I’m naming them Kurt and Gwen.”
“Your mom’s name was Gwen,” I said quietly.
She nodded as I mopped sweat from her brow again. “Feels right. Don’t you think so?”
“Push now, Tala. Hard, hard!”
“Yeah,” I said, not sure if she’d hear me. “Yeah, I do.”
Phelan’s eyes met mine over Tala’s head. He gave me a slight nod that almost made me shiver again. Sometimes, even knowing all I knew, being aware of all I was aware of, the sense of knowing still terrified me.
I wondered if that would ever change.
Then, my fear stopped mattering at the first sound of a baby’s cry.
Yeah!!!