“What a silly old ninny I am,” she says. She dabs again, starts to put it back, and changes her mind as new tears emerge. “I think about you all the time. We pray for you every week at the Sunday service.”

“For me?”

“Of course, dear. All of us.” She shakes her head. “You gave me quite the scare that night, you know. A couple of times, I thought I’d lost you for good.”

So much of that night is a smoky haze, but I never thought what I must have looked like to her. How frightened she must have been trying to keep me awake as the house burned.

“I never thanked you,” I say. “For helping me.”

The words seem so small, so wholly inadequate. She laughs and waves her hanky in the air.

“Oh goodness, don’t you dare thank me,” she says. “To tell the truth of it, I’m not sure I did much to help.”

She takes my hand in hers and taps it lightly, not reacting in the slightest to my disproportionate thumb. Her skin is thin and soft against mine.

“I’m not gonna sit here and pretend to know why God lets things happen to good people like you and your folks, but I know this: God puts people in our path, and my path crossed yours that night,” she says. “Your story is part of mine now, and I know that’s how he wants it—our hearts all jumbled together.”

Her eyes fall on the remnants of my life behind me.

“There’s always beauty in the ashes. Sometimes we just can’t see it yet.”

She squeezes me tight one more time, steps back and shakes her head like she still can’t believe I’m real.

“God bless,” she says. Another dab at both eyes, and then she turns and walks back toward her house. For a moment, I want to call her back, to tell her she saved me that night.

How her voice snatched me back from the darkness.

How she helped me choose to stay.

And when I woke, other voices took her place. Cora with her bedside vigil. Glenn with his soft-spoken reassurances.

Dr. Sharp. Too many nurses to count. Dr. Layne, leaning now against the front of her car, waiting on me like she always has.

She’s right: I’ve never been alone.

Except maybe once.

When I threw myself out that window. The choice I made then—the first of a million choices to live—that one I made alone.

But after, someone was always there.

In my path.

Helping me fight.

Linda with her unwavering tough love, yanking me out of bed to walk. Even Terry with his torture devices, making sure I could bend my elbows to dress myself.

Tony pulling me onto the stage. Asad making me believe someone could ever love this face again. Piper making the nightmare less lonely.

Piper.