Free All Roads Lead Home by Mary Wasowski Page A

because it was time. How many more years are going to go by before you face what drove you away in the first place? You chose wrong, baby girl. You need to come home. Make things right with your parents. Find closure in Jamie’s death. Forgive yourself for living. Forgive yourself for surviving. You saved your brother once and gave him his life back. It is not your fault that he got sick again. You need to forgive yourself and find you again. Not this pale version you show here, but the real you. The girl we used to know but never stopped loving and hoping she would come back to us.”
    I got up and threw myself into Wendy’s arms. I held her so tightly and cried. For the first time in a long while, I just cried.
    “Say his name.” she whispered in my ear as she still held me.
    “Jamie,” I whispered back.
    “That’s a start. I love you, Tumbleweed. I always have, and I always will.”
    “I love you, too. Wendy, I feel it in my gut that there’s more to you being here than just my brother. Why am I needed home? You stated the obvious, but I’m a pretty good lawyer and I know when someone—even you—are not being truthful. Please don’t blindside me again. If you want me to come home, I need more answers.”
    She brushed my hair off my face and stroked my cheek lovingly looking into my eyes like a mother would. She never had children of her own. She always used to say that she would share us with our parents, but we could easily be sent home and they could do the harder stuff. I still smile at that one because Wendy was always there for me, no matter how small or big my problems were. My mother was almost jealous, but I loved them both.
    I waited for Wendy to speak. I gave her the time she needed, but her expression was pained. I wiped my tears as she placed her hands on my shoulders and looked directly into my eyes. I was preparing myself for the worse.
    “Jagger needs you. There was an accident, and he’s in a coma.”
    If I didn’t feel the beats of my heart under my skin, I would have believed time had truly stopped and I was dead. He’s in a coma? I knew I heard her the first time, but I asked again.
    “He’s in a coma?!? What kind of accident put him in a coma? Wendy, please?”
    “Jagger and Shane were driving the horses up to the north ridge of the Parrish Ranch. It was a storm, a big one, and it was fierce. Hours earlier after they finished up at your place, and by the time they got the herd in on the Parrish ranch, they were in the middle of it. They were side by side until Jagger’s horse threw him. He was thrown I don’t know how many feet and rolled down into the embankment below. That basin is deep and lined with branches and rocks. It literally swallowed him up. Shane tried to reach him, but he fell further. It was hours before they found him. They got lucky. Some say it was Jamie, protecting him until help could arrive. Your mother calls him their guardian angel. When the storm had finally let up the search began. He was down by the river and nearly dead. He was pretty banged up with cuts and bruises all over his body. It is a miracle his body wasn’t shattered by the fall. He only sustained a broken leg and some busted ribs.”
    “Why the coma? Did he hit his head on the rocks below?”
    “He had hematoma on his brain after the fall, but that’s healed by now. He’s breathing on his own, but hasn’t awakened yet. That was over three weeks ago. The doctors are hoping for a miracle.”
    “So, what? I’m the miracle? Are you thinking that if you bring me home and to him, that he will suddenly hear my voice, the angels will sing, and he will awaken?”
    “Something like that,” Wendy responded, shrugging her shoulders with not an ounce of doubt in her voice.
    “Oh my God! You are waging on something you will not win. Even if this were to happen, how could you think he would even want me there? I broke his heart when I refused him, not once, but twice. I am the last person he would