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they’d have to work their
     way out in time.
    Julia didn’t care, as long as Lynn lived. Plastic surgeons could work wonders, once she recovered. The machines behind the
     head of the bed flashed on and off, red, yellow, and green lights, the numbers changing. The automatic blood pressure cuff
     tightened at timed intervals, registering on still another monitor. Tubes were hooked up to needles inserted in both her arms,
     and a catheter trailed under the sheet, the bag hanging from the side of the bed. The oxygen cannula ran beneath her nose.
    Modern medicine, Julia thought. So much she didn’tunderstand, yet she had to believe it all would work for Lynn. Shifting her attention, she carefully picked up one of Lynn’s
     hands. It, too, was heavily bandaged, as was the other. Glass cuts and burns from the fire, they’d told her. They’d had to
     cut the silver ring from her finger, the one Julia had given Lynn years ago that she always wore. She touched the cold metal
     in her jacket pocket, as if the gesture might somehow bring her daughter back.
    Gently, she smoothed the skin on Lynn’s left arm, one of the few sections unbandaged and unhurt. Her hand felt a small ridge,
     and she leaned closer to examine it. An old scar, by the looks of the blemish. Odd, she couldn’t recall Lynn having a scar
     on either arm.
    No matter. She’d take her, scarred and marked. Any way she could. At least, there was a chance that her daughter would recover.
     For Emily and John, the hoping had ended that dreadful night. Even family at their side, the boys and Mac who’d rushed to
     the hospital to be with them, hadn’t eased their pain. Their Terry was gone, to be buried tomorrow evening. Julia grieved
     for her niece, for all of them.
    From her other pocket, she removed her rosary. Lowering her head, she began again to pray.
    Emily entered her house through the back, her steps slow. Try as she would, she couldn’t seem to rise above the grief that
     sat in her chest like a fifty-pound weight. Her sons, Michael and Sean, and their families had been over almost constantly,
     trying to comfort while dealing with their own pain. Still, nothing helped.
    Emily wanted to crawl into the casket where her daughter’s body lay burned beyond recognition, and be buried with her.
    In the kitchen, she set down the bag of groceries on the counter. She had no interest in cooking, yet she knew they had to
     eat. Life went on, Father O’Malley from St. Timothy’s had said only last night. He’d told her the samething twelve years ago when their oldest daughter, Kathleen, had been killed at age seventeen driving home from a party after
     drinking illegally. It had taken her years to adjust to that, and she was older now. Emily wasn’t certain she’d make it through
     Terry’s death.
    Swiping at a quick flash of tears, she walked into the living room, then stopped at the archway. John was sprawled in his
     lounge chair, the near-empty bottle of bourbon on the table beside him, the glass tipped on its side in his lap. Passed out
     again. Emily felt a rush of anger, then a wave of sympathy as more tears filled her eyes.
    John had never been a drinker, not like this. Oh, he liked an occasional beer and his holiday bottle of Jamison’s, as most
     Irishmen did. But since the night they’d been called to the hospital, then asked to identify Terry’s body, he’d scarcely drawn
     a sober breath. Just what she needed while trying to cope with her own loss, a drunken husband. And him with a heart condition.
    Terry had been her father’s girl, more lately than before. John had taken Kathleen’s death very hard, working longer hours
     to pay off the debt her accident had left them with, escaping from his memories that way. And, though he loved his sons, he’d
     drawn closer to Terry after losing his first daughter.
    And now she was gone, too.
    John was making her nervous though, Emily thought. His drunken ramblings didn’t make sense. He mumbled