Whew - just making it under the wire for the Thursday update!

Thank you to everyone who comments - it means so much to me! I wish had a way I could respond to you directly, but I'm blowing you kisses. :)

The sound of her voice.

I knew it intimately. I had heard it in a whisper, in a cry. I had heard it harsh in anger, broken in sobs, tripping in laughter like water over stones in a brook.

I had heard it in my dreams. Heard it so many times when I thought I actually would never hear it, or see her in person, again.

Hearing it this time, I remembered all that in a second. My heart pounded and lurched painfully. I struggled for air. I wanted to listen objectively, without the burden of knowledge, all the feelings I had carried over the years, sometimes like a great, heavy sledge pulled behind me, plowing tracks in the mud, sometimes like nothing more than the flicker of something small barely seen in the corner of your eye, a dust-mote, or trick of light.

I wanted to separate that moment from all others, so I could really hear, really feel, objectively, what she was saying, who she was. Like I had slipped on my old lab coat and was looking at a simple readout of test results. This level was good, but this one was a little off. Better pay attention to that when I consider a possible diagnosis, the causes and effects.

I could separate myself. I could do this. I could be strong and do what I needed to do because, after all, this was about a life. Not just mine, not just mine with hers, but my son's. I had to be strong and smart and careful, for him.

I heard each word she said clearly, almost too much so. The strain of her stress and the click of the consonants, even softened by her slight accent, were almost too loud, too real and definite, abrading my ears. Part of me wanted to be in the present so I could fully analyze what she was saying and respond as I needed to with a clear head. Part of me wanted to deny the present because it had become filled with fear and doubt.

I'm afraid of what could happen. How much am I afraid because of what's happening now, and how much am I afraid because of the future I predict, molded by the fear in my past?

"Oh, my God, Cosima. Are you alright? I got your message, what's happening?"

So much emotion in that beautiful voice. Was it real? Or was it, instead, a con, something Sarah recognized because she'd done it before herself? I made a series of noises, some of them words. As much as I tried to pay attention, to consciously form them with my lips, tongue and teeth, it felt awkward and nonsensical, like reading a language phonetically that you don't understand.

"Hold on, I'm pulling over," she responded to whatever I'd said. There was a pause, and I heard the sounds of her car's engine, the clicks and rustles as she put on her turn signal and turned the wheel. Maybe there was the rubbing of the seat leather against her jacket. There was definitely the whoosh of air and cars passing by her, robbed of all bass notes by the small speaker of the telephone.

"Cosima. Cosima? What's happening?"

"Huh…" I began. I swallowed around what felt like a fist in my throat. "...Where were you?"

"What?" Her tone was sharp, frantic. I realized the words had creaked out of my mouth like the hinges of a rusty, long-closed gate.

"Where were you?" I asked again. This time louder, but flat, so flat. Where had all my inflection gone?

"I was at the retreat, the conference," she said. "I'm sorry I couldn't reach you. There was this storm, it was crazy. It knocked out the electricity and because we were in the mountains I couldn't get a phone signal and then my phone battery went dead. It was so weird and frustrating, but I… please, Cosima, I'm sorry, just tell me what's wrong. I'm here for you, just tell me what's going on?"

I was at the retreat…

I remembered the flash of lightning and the crash of thunder, almost simultaneous. The storm that came to mind was only one of many that rolled across the bay over the years, not even as rough as the one that made my first trip to the resort so dramatic, but somehow, it had felt different. It was like I'd heard a whisper, something about that coming boat, and who would be on it. It was a tiny pause that pulled me out of what I'd been doing and thinking, but it reverberated.

"I…" I was saying, I said now. "You… you're saying you had no electricity?" My tongue felt clumsy and thick. "You couldn't… there was no way you could get to a phone, a signal? Didn't you have your car?"

I remembered her in the car, on the way here. Singing to the music. She was nervous, I could tell, but she was happy and gamely went along with my joking and half-forgotten directions. Every moment was pregnant with the knowledge that something important was happening. She was meeting him, my guy, Sevvy, my family. It should have been scarier, shouldn't it? But the sunshine was so warm and golden in her hair and her smile was so wide, her shoulders rocking in that way she did to the beat, everything familiar and so singularly her, that it was all comfortable. Nothing could seem too edgy or fraught because there she was, where she was supposed to be, back in my life, and everything was better than before…

"... but it took them a day and a half to fill the gully where it had washed out. It, it was like, I had no idea it would be like we were so far out in the country, and maybe I should have, I don't know, insisted on getting a ride with the workman, but, I wouldn't have been able to get back because… Cosima, I didn't know something was going on. I feel so stupid, but, but I couldn't know. Please, please tell me what's going on. What's happening with Sevvy? Is everyone alright?"

No, I wanted to say, everyone is not alright. I'm not alright.

"Delphine… Delphine, I…"

"Delphine, relax. It's good to see you." The first words I had said to her at the retreat, after showing her the birds, maybe showing off a little. After wanting to connect with her but not knowing what to say. How could I explain that the first time I'd seen her there, my glance landing on her in my yoga class, I had felt almost pushed into another world, another dimension… And yet, and yet, somehow in that room, in that place full of quiet smiles and people looking to find themselves, in the shafts of early sunlight turning everything to butterscotch and marigolds—or so it seemed to me once I took in her curls, warm against her fair skin, the golden amberglow of her ever-changing irises, and the look on her face, open-mouthed, startled doe eyes honed in on mine— it felt right, pre-ordained, calmly inevitable. How could she possibly be there in that moment, in front of me? How could she not? When I'd felt the loose-sprung unwinding of my peripatetic days, something tugging at my root, core and heart, something saying, wouldn't it be nice to lie down, to sit down in a soft place, warm with the ones you love, and finally, fully be you? Hadn't it been like the chime I rang before our meditation? Hadn't it resonated, brash like a gong, waning into a lower hum of auric energy like that I'd felt when I had been attuned to Reiki, when I had let myself be instead of searching?

"Cosima? Who are you talking to?" Michael's voice broke into my thoughts, and I startled. I had gone elsewhere, backwards in time, to try to make sense of what was happening, to decide what to do. I had been leaning forward, lips nearly touching the phone. Any further and I would have tipped, poured out my heart and everything I'd been thinking.

"It's, it's, uh, Delphine," I answered, and realized I was contracted into myself, looking over my shoulder at him as though I'd been caught doing something wrong. Was I doing something wrong? The lowering and creasing of his brows said I might have been.

"Do you… are you really supposed to be talking to her?" he asked lowly, trying not to be overheard through the cell phone. "Does she have information?"

"I…"

"Cosima? Are you there?" Delphine entreated from the ear speaker. "Can you talk to me, please?"

"Can you just talk to me?" That's what I'd asked her when she came back from Frankfurt. It was the first time I saw her since, and she was there but not there, businesslike, trying to avoid my questions, my love. She was trying to do what was right, wasn't she? She was trying to keep her promise, the one she made to love both me and all of my sisters. But did she have to devastate me like that? I could feel the pain reemerging as I remembered, even though I'd thought… I knew I'd forgiven her, come to understand.

"Cosima, what is it?" Michael asked, reaching out, his hand touching my shoulder. The sensation pulled me back to the present as surely as a tug on my arm could pull me back from wandering into a busy street, a dangerous tide, the path of a train barreling down its tracks into Huxley Station. "It's time, Cos. We have to get ready and go if we're going to make it on time."

Kinda always late, so kinda always sorry… how sorry can I be?

"Uh, yeah. Yeah," I sputtered, re-emerging. I took a breath and closed my eyes. "Delphine…" I choked, then cleared my throat. Still, my voice was weak as it warbled into the phone. "I can't. I just can't do this, now…"

"What?" The word came out sharply, steeped in worry. But my arm was already dropping the phone away from my ear. "Cosima?" the device bleated from my hand, sounding more like the tinny, harsh recording in an old doll's chest than my lover's call. "Cosim—"

"I'm sorry," I whispered into the air, as my thumb pressed the END button. Michael's hand shifted on my shoulder, giving it a light squeeze.

"What's going on? Does she know something?" He asked, and I shook my head almost absently.

"I don't know. But we have to get there," I said. Please let them get here on time, my inner voice prayed. Please let this work out, I can't live if…

"Okay?" Michael said, and this time I nodded and stepped toward the door.

"Okay," I said. And who needs to forgive whom? I thought, as we headed toward what came next. Forgiveness doesn't matter if it costs me him, resounded in me as I saw Severo's face peeking at me, alarmed, from behind his papa's leg. I ran forward and scooped him up, clutching him to me as I quick-stepped toward the door. Michael jerked it open for us and Teo followed, pulling on his jacket.

"I'm going to protect you," I murmured into my son's neck, holding him to me as I slid into the back seat of the car. I didn't put him into his safety seat. Our hope was in elsewhere now.