The Reckoning. Christie Ridgway

traumatic brain injury with me, then.” Because that was what Linda Faraday had suffered ten years before. “And discuss comas and recovery and rehabilitation and—”

      “Okay, okay.” Violet put a cool hand on his arm. “Am I to assume you mean you want to discuss these things now?”

      Maybe he should have felt guilty for insisting, but he didn’t. He’d felt helpless in the face of Ryan’s death and stymied in discovering Jason’s whereabouts, but here was something, finally, he could take action on. “Yes, now. Please,” he added as an afterthought.

      Half smiling and shaking her head, Violet patted his arm. “How about we meet in the study after I give Peter a heads-up? Celeste is at home, so we didn’t plan on staying long.”

      Emmett grimaced. Celeste was the little girl that Peter and Violet were adopting, and she’d recently gone through serious back surgery and rehabilitation of her own. “Tell your husband I’ll make it as brief as I can.”

      Violet gave another shake of her head and another half smile. “You’re not long-winded, I can say that for you, Emmett.”

      Which meant he was brusque to a fault. But he could live with that, especially when Violet got back to him so quickly. Emmett had secured a private place for their chat on a short leather sofa in a far corner of the study. When she settled beside him, he took his eyes off the massive burl wood desk at one end of the room. “The last time I was in here, Ryan seemed to take up more space than that desk of his,” he murmured.

      Violet handed him one of two cups of coffee she held. “We’re all trying to grasp the fact that Ryan’s gone.”

      But Emmett, on the other hand, was going to do something about it. He couldn’t bring the man back, of course, but he could follow through with the pledge he’d made to him. “Traumatic brain injury,” he prompted without more ado.

      “I just love these little social niceties of yours, Emmett,” Violet said, grimacing. Then she seemed to take pity on him. “All right. I’ll stop wasting your time. Traumatic brain injury.”

      She sipped from her cup, then began. “Otherwise known as TBI, or head injury, it’s simply damage to the brain caused by an external force. It’s common in vehicle accidents, when impact can cause the brain to bounce back and forth against the skull. That causes bruising to the brain and, later, swelling. Head injuries are the number-one killer of Americans under the age of forty-four. They kill more under the age of thirty-four than all diseases combined.”

      Emmett absorbed the numbers, but at the moment only one person with a head injury mattered to him. “Do all people with a TBI go into a coma?”

      “Serious injury can occur without a loss of consciousness, but in a TBI, usually the brain stem is injured and that produces a period of coma that may last for some time.”

      “But in a coma for years? Is that usual, Violet?”

      The good doctor hesitated, because, Emmett knew, they were getting into Linda Faraday-specific territory. She’d gone into a coma following the car accident. Then the doctors had discovered she was a couple of months pregnant. She’d given birth in that state and stayed in that state until a little over a year ago.

      “What’s more unusual, Emmett,” Violet finally said, “is for a patient to recover enough to make an independent life for herself after so long.”

      “It’s not like the movies, huh? Snoozing away until one day the patient awakes, refreshed and alert?”

      Violet shook her head. “Maybe for Sleeping Beauty, but in the real world that doesn’t happen. In the case of Linda—” She stopped herself. “Emmett, I don’t feel right about this.”

      He didn’t waste his breath arguing with her. “Let’s talk hypotheticals, then. If a hypothetical patient were in a coma…”

      Violet was shaking her head again.

      “She wasn’t in a coma?”

      “The technical definition of a coma is an altered state of consciousness in which the patient’s eyes don’t open and the patient doesn’t react to pain or commands, or doesn’t speak in recognizable words. So while the hypothetical patient might start out that way, once she can react, respond or speak, then she’s no longer in a coma, though she may not yet be returned to full consciousness. In that semiconscious state, patients can be fed, or feed themselves, and get some kinds of physical therapy to keep their muscles from atrophying. There are people who remain in that twilight state for the rest of their lives.”

      “So what brought Linda out of—excuse me—what might bring a hypothetical patient out of that twilight and into full consciousness?”

      Violet shrugged. “No one knows. After so many years, I suppose the best explanation is…a miracle.”

      He frowned at that, miracle not being in the vocabulary of a been-there, seen-every-horror FBI agent. “Ryan seemed to think that Linda still needs some kind of help. I promised to provide that.”

      Violet opened her mouth, closed it, then sighed. “All right. Linda. Let’s talk about Linda. Ryan was right that she’ll need help. Ten years have passed. The world isn’t the same as Linda remembers. She’s not the same as she remembers. She’s been in a rehab facility for the past year, relearning old skills and acquiring new skills to cope with those ways in which she’s changed, but it can’t be easy.”

      “Ryan said she was being released from rehab soon. He wanted me to…protect her.”

      “That sounds like Ryan. But you’ll have to find out from Linda if protection is what she wants—or will accept. From what I understand, she’ll be going to the home of Nancy and Dean Armstrong, the couple who have taken care of Ricky since infancy.”

      Emmett thought of the truculent Ricky and the ethereal Linda. “It doesn’t matter what she wants. I promised Ryan. It’s the least I can do for him.”

      “There’s that guilt again,” Violet said. “Any woman, even one who has been in Linda’s shoes, won’t appreciate being an obligation to you.”

      “She’s not an obligation. She’s a…” Compulsion. The light. Springtime. In his mind’s eye, he saw her face turned up to the sunshine and again he felt that warm weight of Ryan’s hand on his shoulder. She needed him, and he was being directed to take care of her. God, how could he explain it to Violet without her calling for the men in white coats with straitjackets? “She’s just something I know I’m supposed to do right now.”

      Violet toasted him with a little dip of her coffee cup. “Then good luck convincing her of that.”

      Linda consulted the notebook on her bedside table the moment she woke up. It was chubby, with a no-nonsense blue tagboard cover. Today’s place was marked with a simple paper clip. She read the words she’d penciled in the evening before to aid her in those first, often confusing moments of awakening.

      Today is Tuesday, May 2.

      YOUR ROOM HAS MOVED.

      You live in the south wing now. Bathroom is on the right.

      If it’s morning, get up, shower, dress. Go to breakfast.

      Turn left for the dining hall.

      Tuesday, May 2. The date hadn’t been a revelation, though the year might take her an instant or two to conjure up. She was even already aware that her room had moved. But she still kept up the habits that had gotten her through the first months at the rehabilitation facility, when blinking could cause her to lose her train of thought—or worse, a day or two of short-term memories.

      She stretched, then climbed out of bed and took in the outfit she’d laid out for herself the night before. Yoga pants, T-shirt, running shoes. She had physical therapy scheduled for the late morning, which meant time on the elliptical machine and stretching on the mats. A year ago, she’d been learning to walk again; these days, she was