Chapter 7 - The Healing LightOne year had passed since the dramatic confrontation at St. Raphael’s, and the spring sun over Lake Michigan was bright, warm, and filled with the promise of a new life.
The high-rise towers of Chicago’s financial district still glowed in the distance, but from the wooden deck of our new home—a beautiful, modest house surrounded by old oak trees in Evanston—the city felt like another world.
Grandma Bee sat in a rocking chair on the porch, her silver hair shining in the sunlight. She was laughing, her hands moving dynamically as she showed a young private nurse how to properly braid a three-strand ribbon. She was healthy, her spine fully healed, her laughter the sweetest sound I had ever heard.
"Nadia, honey!" Grandma Bee called out, her amber eyes bright with love. "The lemonade is getting warm! Bring Adrian out here before he spends the whole afternoon in his study!"
"I'm coming, Grandma!" I laughed, stepping out of the kitchen with a pitcher of fresh lemonade.
I was wearing a simple yellow sundress, my braids hanging freely over my shoulders. I was no longer a machine held together by coffee and overdue bills. I was a partner. I was a co-founder of the Beatrice Coleman Foundation, a charity we had established to fund spinal surgeries for families who couldn't afford them.
I felt a pair of warm, bare arms wrap around my waist from behind.
I leaned back against Adrian’s chest, my head resting against his shoulder. His skin was bare. His hands, free of the black gloves that had once been his prison, were warm and gentle against my waist.
The burning was gone. Not just with me, but slowly, with the rest of the world. The daily fifteen-minute touch had done more than just ease his pain; it had healed his nervous system, rewiring his brain to accept the warmth of human connection once more. He could shake his partners' hands now. He could hug his grandmother. He could live in the light.
"You're thinking too much again," Adrian whispered into my ear, his breath warm against my neck.
"I'm just thinking about how much a seventy-thousand-dollar phone cost me," I teased, turning in his arms to look up at his dark, handsome face. "It cost me my job as a cleaning woman."
"It was the best investment I ever made," Adrian smiled, his dark eyes filled with a softness that I had never seen in him during our first nights in the tower.
He leaned down, his bare lips meeting mine in a soft, lingering kiss that tasted of sweet lemons and spring air. There was no pain. There was no fire. There was only the deep, unshakeable peace of two souls who had found their salvation in the dark, and had finally stepped out into the sun.
Grandma Bee chuckled from the porch, her rocking chair creaking in a beautiful, steady rhythm.
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"I told you, Adrian," she called out, a knowing smile on her face. "Love is a decision you keep making. Even when the phone breaks."
Adrian laughed, his hand slipping into mine, his fingers interlocking with mine as we walked toward the porch together. The storm was over, and the future was finally ours to hold.
