ONE HUNDRED FIVE

ONE HUNDRED FIVE

GRACE, YOU ARE FEARLESS. You strive for perfection. That will serve you well, honey, but life will not always be easy. There will be setbacks, but they won't make you a failure. Show me someone who has succeeded, and I will show you someone who failed but kept trying. Smile, sweetie, remember to smile, to let some light shine into your life. Always remember that happiness is not a destination but part of the journey itself.

Lincoln, you are your father through and through. You are outgoing and warm and happy. Don't ever change that. Just remember that hard work and perseverance will get you what you want in life. Nobody will hand it to you …

My eyes pop open into a dark green blurry nothingness, no sound but the thump of my pulse. Where — which way is up, which is down —

I can't feel my limbs, can't move, panic setting in as I feel my lungs contract, as I thirst for air —

Light. Light above. The water's surface. So beautiful.

My arms. I move them, flap them, try to wiggle my legs, any movement to propel me upward, but I can't make them work, can't make them move enough, but I see you, the light, I see the light and I want to kick, I want to flap my arms and then yes, I'm moving upward but I'm fading, too, fading in this foggy water, and I want so badly to swim to see Grace to see Lincoln because I have so much love left to give them so many things to teach them so many hugs and kisses and tears to wipe from their faces but the one thing I don't have is breath and I'm fading, I know it now, and I am in your hands, I am in your hands to do what you will with me —

Light coloring my eyelids, then a blast of cold air, sweet, pure, delicious oxygen, and I let out a gasp and I'm thrown against a person, a man gripping me in a bear hug as we swing from a ladder —

"I got you! I got you, Marcie!"

— the water rising and crashing against us, the helicopter hovering above me.

"Hold on to me, Marcie! Hold on tight —"

Kyle.

"— they're bringing the raft over! Hold on tight, and we'll get you to safety!"

I hold on to him as best I can, my right wrist weighed down by the duffel bags full of life jackets handcuffed to me — an impediment now but probably the reason I made it back up. The wind blowing us in every direction, the ladder twisting and turning, the cold, the bitter cold so numbing and stinging —

"You're crazy, you know that?" he shouts. "You could've died!"

I may be crazy, but I'm alive. I could've died, but I didn't. I made it through.

Just like I promised you, David.