Blood Trade: A Sean Coleman Thriller (40 page)

“Don’t give up hope on that transplant coming through,” said Sean, commanding the
attention of everyone who stood around them. “Never give up, okay?” he added with
a crack in his voice.

Jessica nodded her head. She didn’t seem particularly comforted by his words, but
appeared to appreciate them nonetheless.

Anna watched Sean as her mother spoke to her softly. Sean couldn’t even imagine what
the little girl was thinking—how much she could possibly understand about everything
that had happened and what was going to happen next. All he knew was what Andrew
Carson had told him the night before when Sean first found Anna sitting on his lap:
She was an angel.

The angel suddenly lifted her thin arm and unexpectedly waved
at Sean. Though the
oxygen mask covered Anna’s mouth, the tightness of her eyes suggested that she was
smiling at him.

Sean bit his lip and felt his breath leave him. He raised his hand and waved back.
His eyes watered up, but he kept a brave face and smiled at the girl. As he did,
the warm sun washed over his back and he felt as though his uncle was telling him
something from above. He wasn’t sure what was being said by the old man, but he knew
he had somehow earned his pride, and at that very moment, it seemed to be enough.

The sharp angle of the sunlight cast a long shadow from Sean’s body across the trampled
snow before him. He couldn’t help but take notice of how defined and large its outline
was. It felt to him as if there was finally no dispute in the world over who it belonged
to. It wasn’t the dark shadow cast over him by his father’s abandonment, and it wasn’t
the bright shadow of his uncle under which he’d chosen to live.

It was Sean’s and only Sean’s.

He was soon to become an uncle himself, and the sudden realization of that brought
a subtle grin to his face. He was his own man, and it was time for him, for possibly
the first time in his life, to serve as an aspiring example for someone else.