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kiss.

Three
    Jac was unsure of where she was, only sure that she was in pain. A cramp tightened her stomach. Then was gone. And with its exit she fully awoke and realized she was in Malachai’s guest room.
    As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw him, sitting about ten feet away from her. Sprawled in a large armchair by the bed, he was asleep, his book splayed across his chest where it must have fallen.
    She remembered Malachai saying he was going to stay with her and make sure she fell asleep. But why? What was wrong? She tried to remember what came before he’d said that.
    They’d been walking through the woods, she’d seen the giant stone—
    Another cramp gripped her. Uncomfortable, she shifted, tried to find a better position and felt the warm stickiness between her legs.
    Carefully, she stood. Grabbing her dopp kit from the dresser, she hurried to the bathroom.
    Jac had never been regular. Stress and air travel affected her menses. Since she’d recently flown quite a bit, she hadn’t paid much attention to missing her period in June. Or in July. Besides, she hadn’t felt different. And people said you did. That you knew. But she hadn’t known.
    That’s why, a few days ago, she’d finally bought the test. At home, she unwrapped it and then sat on the edge of her bed and stared at the plastic stick as if it were a priceless object discovered on one of her expeditions in Greece or Turkey or Japan.
    She’d just looked at it and wondered what she’d do if indeed she was pregnant. Jac didn’t have a husband or a boyfriend. All she’d had was a moment out of time—a passion resurrected for a few brief nights in Paris in late May—with a man she’d been in love with it seemed, for better or worse, for most of her life. But Griffin was married. Had a family. Was entrenched in problems with his wife and trying to salvage their relationship. Jac couldn’t interfere. If she was pregnant, how would she handle it?
    Jac wasn’t like most of her friends. She never imagined herself with children. Never allowed herself to yearn for a baby. She was just too worried she’d be the same kind of mother hers had been to her and Robbie. A childhood fraught with that much trauma causes damage, and Jac couldn’t conceive of damaging another human soul. Would never want to inflict anything like what she’d been through on someone else.
    But could she give a child up if she was pregnant? Especially Griffin’s child? Hadn’t she given up much too much already?
    So she hadn’t taken the test. Jac had put the plastic stick in her medicine cabinet and decided to deal with it after her weekend with Malachai. Now that wouldn’t be necessary. Now she knew. She just didn’t know how she was going to cope with what she knew.
    As she cleaned herself she tried to reconstruct what had happened to her in the woods that had made this happen.
    The lightning hadn’t struck her, but it had hit right next to her. For a moment, the flash had blinded her. The resounding crack had deafened her. The earth had trembled. The shock came up through the soil. The power and intensity of it rattled her bones and hurt her teeth. The acrid scent of burning leaves filled her nostrils. She’d jumped back and smacked into the rock’s hard, unyielding surface. Around her leaves fell and branches broke and all the while the rain, the interminable rain, never lessened, never yielded.
    Finally Malachai rushed out, dragged her across the moat and pulled her into one of the stone huts, where they waited out the rest of the storm. She remembered he’d helped her take off her sneakers. The rubber soles were burnt and her socks were singed. But her skin was untouched. He’d said he didn’t think any electricity had been conducted up into her.
    But wasn’t the proof of its power slowly seeping out of her? And didn’t it mean there was now one more loss to mourn?
    As Jac zipped up the dopp kit, she remembered the terrible sadness she’d felt just before