Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 100750 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100750 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 504(@200wpm)___ 403(@250wpm)___ 336(@300wpm)
Now, instead of pushing her out of his mind, he typed her name into a search engine and watched as her name, along with her husband’s, came up. For a fee, he could pay a company to give him her phone number, address, and email. That seemed excessive and invasive.
Yet he did it for no other reason than he had to know. While his mind told him not to do it, his heart pushed him forward. He typed in his information, along with his credit card number, and he fully expected the bank to call him right away with some fraud charge; then he clicked submit.
The screen changed, and her address, along with a picture of her house, showed on his screen. The house was everything Nadia had ever talked about wanting. The craftsman-style home had a wide porch with a white rocking chair. The stairs had potted flowers, blooming and overflowing. She had a home, a family, and had lost her husband.
He told himself that despite her loss, she was doing well.
Or was she?
TWENTY-FOUR
GRAYSON
“I need your help,” Grayson said to Pearce when he arrived at the basketball court. They’d started playing again, one on one, as soon as the doctor had given Grayson the okay. To this day, he hadn’t gone back to the game he loved, afraid someone would bump him in the chest and mess up his heart. Pearce, he trusted. The others, not so much.
Pearce dribbled the ball between his legs and made some move that made Grayson roll his eyes. “Things good with Reid?”
“Never better.” Grayson finished tying his shoes and then held his hands out, asking for the ball. Pearce passed it, and then they walked toward the hoop. Grayson took his turn dribbling. “She’s definitely not the problem.”
“Problem? What problem?”
Grayson shot. Pearce rebounded and kicked the ball back to Grayson. He took another five shots and then stopped. “Lately, I’ve felt this ache in my chest. I’ve been to the doc. He says I’m fine. Therapist thinks it might be cellular memory.”
“Cell phone what?”
Grayson rolled his eyes again. “Cellular memory. It’s where the donated organ remembers its former host.”
Pearce stared.
And stared.
“Are you saying your heart remembers its former life?”
Grayson shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s hard to know because there isn’t any scientific fact to back up organs retaining memories. But think about it. If you were to get a brain transplant, you wouldn’t be you, but the person whose brain you’d gotten.”
“Which is one of the reasons people can’t get a brain transplant,” Pearce said. “Aside from the whole nervous system needing to be reconnected.”
“Right, but think about it.” Grayson placed a closed fist over his heart. “This heart belonged to someone. It loved someone. It brought joy and sorrow; it felt and ached for people, hobbies, and who knows what else. How do I know I’m doing it justice by existing?”
“That’s deep,” Pearce said. “I don’t think you need to do a deep dive into what this heart did before it became yours. Whoever it belonged to, they’re gone. They’ve left this realm and left you the gift of life.”
Gift of life. He’d seen those words in Rafe Karlsson’s obituary.
Grayson nodded. “What if what I’m feeling is loss? What if this ache is the heart longing for the people it left behind?” He shot the ball and missed, and neither of them moved to chase it down.
Pearce studied Grayson, and then slowly shook his head. “Do you love Reid?”
“More than anything.”
“Where do you feel that love?” Pearce asked.
Grayson appraised his friend and placed his hand over his heart. “Here. Without a doubt. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel for someone else.”
“But who?”
He shook his head and walked over to where the ball sat motionless on the court. He dribbled, shot, and retrieved his own rebound. “That’s just it, I don’t know. I can write to my donor’s family through UNOS, but they don’t have to choose to meet me, which leaves me right where I am now. Or I can follow a hunch.”
“Hunches are never good,” Pearce said. Grayson passed him the ball. He shot and made it. “They can get you into trouble.”
“If I ignore my hunch, then what?”
Pearce shot again and then sighed. “What’s the hunch?”
Grayson passed the ball back to his friend. “I think my heart came from a man in Boston who died saving someone from getting hit by a car.”
Pearce froze midshot. The ball faltered and never made it to the basket. Normally, Grayson would razz his friend, but not today. The ball bounced away from them. “Say what? How?”
“When my therapist told me about cellular memory, I started looking things up online—”
“What kind of things?” Pearce interrupted.
“Deaths,” Grayson said. “I started thinking about the people who died close to the day of my surgery. I looked up obituaries in the area, mostly because I didn’t know how far a heart could travel for a transplant. The people who died, though, had cancer, overdosed, or didn’t seem like a viable candidate for donation. Then I searched farther out and came across an article about Warren and Lorraine Bolton. They lost their son-in-law in that accident I mentioned. I wouldn’t have gone any further except I know the Boltons.”