Shine Your Light on Me Read Online Free Page B

that. She could hear the people inside the bar talking, some crying, some passed her, coming outside, just to dump their beers out on the snow and carry the empty bottles back inside.
    She draped her arm over the child’s shoulder and opened the door for her and found Aiden and his father and Mitch at the center of a body of stars. All of them seemed to glow from their encounter with the miracle. She knew all of them well enough, and had never seen a one appear even remotely close to how they did now. The pastor was the most animated. She couldn’t blame him; devoting your life to a belief that never offered you anything but a promise, was not an easy road to stumble down. And when he’d gotten cancer, there were many not of the faith who had snickered and believed that he had it coming. It was cruel, not that she was unused to cruelty or harshness, but it said more about the people who found joy in his misery than it did about Pastor Clement or whatever God he chose to worship.
    But he had brothers and sisters now, blue collar men and women with scars as deep as they were wide, with hopes they had put on hold because it was difficult to pursue those desires when what little energy they had was spent just getting by. They looked at him and even more so at Aiden as if they were part of a greater plan, one they were being offered a glimpse of, a part of, and their gratefulness was palpable.
    Mitch had his back to her and was questioning Aiden but the boy stared at him blankly, and at first Aria thought he had been struck dumb by the incident, or that his mind had been wiped clean, the soul plucked out of him, possibly its essence the source of the light as it had fled his body. But then Aiden shook his head to the question. Aria hadn’t heard it. Others were asking questions as well; there was a murderous tide of voices.
    Jessica’s hand was small in Aria’s. She made her way through the crowd, thinking that she wanted to see the young girl speak again as badly as Mitch did. Two months prior, when Rebecca had fallen asleep at the wheel and hit the tree and died, the young girl had been with her. Jessica had sat in the back seat for twelve hours with her mother’s corpse, the scent of her blood, all the unanswered questions, before someone had found them.
    She had not spoken since, and one of her eyes was always too large, as if extremely focused on the world she was stuck in, while the other was squinted, as if to peer into the distance of eternity, hoping to catch a glimpse of her mother’s face.
    The doctors had been no help: some said she might speak again, others said she might not. There was no definitive answer. None of them as of yet knew what was wrong with her eyes. Mitch had refused to let them open his baby’s skull if it came to that. And here, in this room, was his greatest hope.
    By the aggressive way he sat, by the excitement in his voice, she knew that whatever Aiden had done, Mitch would find a way to make him do it again, just one more time, for his little girl. He was so much his father’s son. And Mickey, before his first heart attack, had been just as strong, just as vital. It was strange to her, how much sons took from their fathers, whether by imitation or force. Mickey was in no shape to stand up to anyone anymore, and if his competition discovered that fact, it’d all go up in a puff of smoke. She had her doubts, though, about Mitch. He could not be as cruel as his father. Unlike Mickey, his son enjoyed being a dad. Jessica—her safety, her happiness—meant more to him than the O’Connell legacy. She loved that about the boy, his love for his daughter.
    She’d been the apple of his eye since her birth, built lean like him and her disposition warm like her mother’s had been until the accident. But Jessica didn’t smile anymore, and since she didn’t, Mitch refused to as well. There were no light-hearted, laugh-away-the-tension, moments for him. Yet it boggled her mind that he did not