Prologue
Into the Light
The hall was brightly lit, almost blinding. Jess felt strange, fuzzy, disoriented, and confused. She didn't understand where she was, or how she got there, but she felt warm and at peace. She glanced behind her, seeing only an endless stretch of cold, dark emptiness. A voice deep inside her whispered, urging her to choose: move toward the light and warmth, or turn back into the cold and darkness.
Easy decision, Jess thought, taking a tentative step forward. The light called to her, but with every step, she felt an inexplicable pull to the darkness behind her. She reached three-quarters of the way down the hall and stopped. Hesitation crept in. Once she passed halfway, there would be no turning back. Jess glanced over her shoulder.
What's back there? she wondered. But she kept walking toward the light.
"How is she?" Ryan's voice echoed through the void. It was faint, but it stopped her dead in her tracks. His voice stirred something deep inside her.
"Come on, Jessie," a nine-year-old Ryan said, his little hand firmly holding hers. "I'll show Tyler he can't pick on my sister."
A smile tugged at Jess's lips. She remembered Ryan, fierce in his love for her, standing up to the bully on her behalf.
But Jess didn't turn back. She kept walking into the light.
"The same," Sherry's voice said.
Again, Jess paused, the familiar voice of her stepmother catching her off guard. Sherry had stepped into her life when she was just nine, after Jess lost her mother. Sherry became the constant she never knew she needed.
"There, you're as good as new," Sherry smiled at her eleven-year-old stepdaughter. Jess frowned.
"My leg still hurts," Jess protested. Sherry knelt and kissed the Band-Aid she had just placed over the scrape on Jess's knee. "There, I kissed it all better."
The memory came rushing back—the fall off her bike, the scrape, and Sherry's comforting kisses that had healed more than just the physical wound.
Jess continued forward, nearing the halfway point.
"Barely hanging on," Don's voice broke through the darkness.
A smile tugged at Jess's lips as she thought of him.
"Jess," Don's voice called, pulling her back into the memory. "Wait for me."
Jess turned, her heart fluttering. "Yeah," she murmured as their lips met.
"Thanks," he whispered after the kiss.
The memory was vivid, but Jess pressed on toward the light.
"She's a stubborn girl," Cliff's voice boomed from the darkness.
Jess looked back, her father's voice strong and familiar.
"Dad!" she yelled, rushing into his den. She was bursting with news she couldn't wait to share.
Cliff looked up from his hockey game, grinning. "The game is almost over, hang on."
Instead, Jess snatched the remote and turned off the TV. "I've got huge, life-altering news to share."
"Okay, Jessie-bee, you've got our attention now… Spill."
"I made homicide," Jess squealed, her heart pounding with excitement.
Her father's pride had been overwhelming.
Jess shook off the warm feeling and took another step forward.
"Yes, she is," Abby's voice drifted through the shadows, followed by Olivia's laugh. Her best friends since junior high.
"Scott sucks," sixteen-year-old Jess said to an upset Abby.
"He doesn't deserve you," Liv agreed.
Jess remembered their first broken hearts.
Another step into the light.
"Dad! Sherry!" Christopher's voice cut through the quiet.
Jess stopped again as another memory rushed forward.
"Jessie, I'm having a girl," Christopher, twenty-eight, said excitedly to his eighteen-year-old sister.
Jess smiled, remembering being the first to know that Julia would be a girl, the first to hold each of her six nieces and nephews.
Jess's feet were now at the halfway mark. One more step and there would be no going back. But Jess found herself frozen, rooted to the spot. She couldn't move. Sherry's voice echoed in her mind.
"Sweet dreams, I love you, kid," Sherry always said that before hanging up the phone, even now, at twenty-eight. If Jess didn't answer, Sherry left it on voicemail.
Suddenly, Jess turned away from the light, taking a step toward the darkness.
"I love you, kid," Christopher's voice played in her mind.
She stepped further into the darkness.
"I love you, kid," Michael's voice whispered.
Another step, and pain shot through Jess's side. While walking toward the light, she hadn't felt a thing—only calmness. But now the pain was real. She gritted her teeth and kept moving toward the dark.
"I love you, kid," Andrew's voice followed, steady and strong.
Jess held her side, the pain intensifying, but she kept moving. Suddenly, everything from her left shoulder down went numb. She looked back at the light, unsure if she had made the right choice.
"I love you, kid," Ryan's voice echoed in her mind.
It was a ritual between them—always saying those words before hanging up.
Jess kept walking into the blackness.
"I love you, baby girl," her father's voice filled her head.
"Dad, I'm not a baby anymore," Jess had always said.
"You'll always be my baby girl," her father would reply.
It was his words that gave her the strength to keep pushing forward through the pain and into the darkness.
"Be careful today," Don's voice whispered. "Be safe, babe."
It wasn't "I love you"—but it meant just as much.
Jess knew that if she ever wanted to hear those words again, or feel Sherry's nightly kiss, or hear her father's comforting voice, she had to keep moving through the dark. Jess had to choose the darkness to hold onto the love they shared.
So, she moved onward, falling deeper into the black, until the world seemed to disappear.
And Jess's eyes fluttered open.