The Color of Heaven - 09 - The Color of Time

by Julianne MacLean

  “At least we got it standing up again,” I said, shaking myself out of my strange reverie. “Let’s go and see if there is any damage to the house.”

  We started up the hill to do a more thorough inspection.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  The house was fine, with the exception of leaves and grass that would need to be cleaned from the white exterior with a hose, and a few branches strewn about the yard. By some stroke of luck, only one of my trees had blown down. I called an arborist to arrange for its removal, but he explained that it might take awhile before he could fit me in, as he was overwhelmed with calls.

  Later that day, power was restored and Gram was fine at home, so I decided to sleep in my own bed that night.

  What a luxury it was to take a hot shower and cook a meal at the stove. I played no music that night as I sat at the dining room table. I simply sat in silence.

  Later, as I was washing the dishes, the telephone rang. It was a woman from the yacht club in Portland who had tracked down Evangeline’s owners.

  “It’s an older couple from Chicago,” she explained. “They left her moored in Kettle Cove but had to fly home urgently because of a death in the family. The gentleman was very apologetic. He said he had no idea the storm would be as bad as it was, and he agreed that he should have taken steps to have the boat moved to a safer location. He did offer to pay for any damage the boat caused to your property.”

  “Tell him there was no damage,” I interjected. “And I’m very sorry for his loss.”

  The woman told me that a crew with equipment would come by to remove the boat as soon as possible. I thanked her and we hung up.

  When the kitchen was clean, I boiled water for tea and strolled out to the veranda to stand at the balustrade and take a look at the sailboat—still lying on her side on my lawn.

  The sea was calm as glass and the stars were just beginning to twinkle in the sky. It reminded me of the night Chris had taken me out in the rowboat for stargazing. What a truly magical night it had been—one I would remember for as long as I lived.

  All at once, I felt a severe and agonizing pang of longing in my core, as if my insides were coming apart. I missed Chris terribly and wished he were not so far away. What I wouldn’t give to wrap my arms around his neck, smell the clean scent of his skin, hear the husky timbre of his voice in my ear.

  It was difficult, in that moment, not to lose all hope for future happiness, because the people I loved most always seemed to be snatched from my world.

  Yet, there I stood—somehow surviving, like Evangeline. Tossed about in a storm, but still, miraculously, in one piece. Soon, someone who cared about Evangeline would arrive to collect her and she would most likely sail again.

  Perhaps there was hope for me as well. Perhaps I would sail again, too.

  * * *

  That night, as I slid beneath the covers and turned out the light, I found myself thinking of all that I was grateful for—the fact that, three days after a Category II hurricane, I had a roof over my head and my friends and family were all safe.

  Not everyone was so lucky. There had been two fatalities the night of the storm. One man had swerved in his car to avoid falling power lines and driven into a brick building. Another man had been swept off the rocks at the Portland Head Light by a giant wave when he foolishly went out to see what the storm waves looked like.

  Tonight I was safe and warm in my bed. Tomorrow I would go back to work at the pub, where I had the pleasure of spending my days with my best friend, Cassie, and two generous, nice guys in the kitchen. My grandmother was fit as a fiddle at the age of eighty-six, and my sister Jenn had survived a brain tumor last year and would soon be giving birth to a son. This time next month, I would be an auntie.

  As I thought of all these things, a sense of peace and wellbeing settled into my heart and I closed my eyes to say a prayer for Chris, Katelyn and Logan. Then I drifted into a dream where I floated out of my body and left my bedroom. I descended the stairs, passed through the front door and flew over the sailboat to the sundial at the edge of my lawn.

  Circling Back

  Chapter Forty-eight

  I woke to the steady, recurring electronic beep of an alarm clock going off next to my head. Laboring to rouse myself from slumber, I reached out and pressed the snooze button, then flopped back onto the pillow and immediately fell back to sleep.

  It seemed like only seconds later that the beeping resumed. I reached out again and shut it off, then realized something wasn’t right. The alarm clock was on the left side of the bed. Normally, I kept it on the right.

  Eyes flying open, I sat bolt upright. Good God, where was I? A quick perusal of the room revealed that I was in the green guestroom at my grandmother’s house—but why? I knew I had returned to my own home the day before, after spending three nights in town with Gram after the hurricane. Why didn’t I remember coming back here?

  Throwing off the covers, I swung my feet to the floor and stood up too quickly. A feeling of lightheadedness came over me and I had to sit back down.

  As I looked down at myself, I realized I was wearing a white nightgown I didn’t recognize, which filled me with fear. What was happening to me?

  “Gram?” I called out, but the house was quiet. I rose to my feet again, tiptoed out into the hall and called out a second time. “Gram, are you here?”

  No answer came, so I padded down the stairs to the lower level. Assuming Gram was just outside watering the potted plants on the porch—as she often did in the mornings—I opened the front door and stepped over the threshold onto the painted outdoor deck.

  The covered porch was vacant. The hanging swing was empty, swiveling gently on its chains in a cool morning breeze.

  I moved to the edge of the veranda and looked up at the lush, green treetops across the street. I listened to the sound of the wind whispering through the leaves. The neighborhood seemed eerily quiet. I was surprised to see that all the damage from the hurricane had been taken care of. There was no debris in any of the yards.

  A chill moved through me. I hugged my arms around myself and returned inside, closed the door tightly and locked it behind me.

  Gordon hopped down from the back of the piano, hitting a few discordant notes before landing on the floor and approaching to rub up against my legs.

  Bending forward, I scooped him into my arms. “Hey, do you know where Gram is?”

  Stroking Gordon’s soft fur, I carried him to the kitchen and spotted my laptop sitting open on the table. I had a vague memory of sitting there for many hours the night before, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what I had been working on. And I was absolutely certain that I had gone to bed in my own home in Cape Elizabeth. This was making no sense. I grew worried as, once again, I thought about my sister with her brain tumor last year, accompanied by severe symptoms of memory loss.

  Running my finger over the mouse, I hit “return.” A screen popped up with information about lucid dreaming and astral projection. All at once, as if an electric current were buzzing my brain, everything came rushing back to me: my flight from Montana to take care of Gram who just had hip surgery, and my efforts to control my dreams, dreams about Ethan—our summer romance…his death…then other fragments where he didn’t die on the night his parents came home and found us alone in his house.

  I couldn’t have dreamed all of that. I was certain it was real. If it weren’t, that would mean I’d never lived at the mansion at all. I would never have worked at the pub, never had a son named Tyler… And what about the weeks I spent with Chris? What about his wife Katelyn who broke her neck in a cycling accident?

  My gaze darted to the date on the bottom right corner of the computer screen. Today was August 6.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I fought to think back to everything I had done the night before. I remembered being at my home in Cape Elizabeth. I had eaten supper at the dining room table and gone outside afterward to look at the sailboat that had been cast onto my lawn
during the hurricane. Her name was Evangeline.

  I set Gordon down on the floor and pressed the heel of my palm to my forehead.

  “My God,” I whispered, remembering every single moment with astounding clarity, especially the last few weeks with Chris. That couldn’t have been a dream.

  I sank onto a chair, rested my elbows on the table and buried my face in my hands. “What’s happening?”

  I then leaped to my feet, ran to the back door, whipped it open and burst onto the deck to look at Gram’s trees.

  Every last one of them was still standing—even the majestic evergreen that I had seen on top of her garden shed after the storm. This morning, its branches blew gracefully in the wind, its roots buried deep in the ground.

  “I’m losing my mind,” I whispered as I looked up at the clouds, shifting and rolling fast across the sky.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  “Morning, Gram,” I said as I bent forward over the hospital bed and kissed her on the cheek. “How are you feeling today?”

  “Much better,” she replied with enthusiasm. “Though I’m terrified about getting out of this bed. The nurse said they expect me to try and walk later today. That’s crazy, don’t you think?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m sure they know what they’re doing.”

  “Hmmph,” she replied. “I suspect they just want to get rid of me so they can free up this bed for someone else. I’m trying to be extra sweet today so they’ll enjoy having me around and want me to stay, but it doesn’t appear to be working.”

  I laughed. “I’m sure they love you, Gram, and they just want what’s best for you—and that’s for you to get back on your feet so you can finish cleaning your gutters.”

  She gave me a warning look. “Enough of that, young lady. I learned my lesson. But I would like to get home to my kitchen and garden. Have you been watering my plants?”

  I realized suddenly that I hadn’t watered anything that morning, but I lied. “They’re doing great, and Gordon’s great, too. He misses you, though. I can tell.”

  “Well, I should hope so. I raised him from a kitten.”

  Pulling a chair closer to the bed, I took a seat and chatted with her about what she’d watched on television the night before. Then I sat forward and said, “You wouldn’t believe the dream I had last night.”

  Although it still seemed very real to me and I was totally freaked out and wondering if I should make an appointment to see a neurologist.

  “I love hearing other people’s dreams,” Gram replied. “Tell me.”

  Drawing in a deep breath, I launched into the whole story about how, in the dream, I had changed the events on the night Ethan died. Instead of going to his parent’s home while they were supposed to be away, he and I went to the Lobster Shack, which changed the course of the future because he survived.

  “We ended up getting married a couple of years later,” I said.

  Gram sighed. “That is indeed the stuff of dreams. Wouldn’t that have been nice.”

  “It would have been,” I replied, “except that in the dream, we got divorced after losing a son named Tyler who fell off the monkey bars. Our marriage fell apart because I couldn’t handle the grief—which is so typical of me. Ethan eventually married someone else.”

  “Well, that’s not the happy ending I was hoping for.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I agreed. “But there’s more. I went back to sleep and dreamed again that we got married, but our son didn’t fall off the monkey bars.”

  “That’s better,” she said.

  I shook my head. “No, because both Ethan and Tyler were killed by a drunk driver.”

  She nodded knowingly. “Ah…I see where this is going. I’m not a dream expert, but it sounds like you believe that a lifetime with Ethan was never meant to be, no matter how things had played out. Don’t you think that’s what it means?”

  I leaned back in my chair and wondered if she were right. Maybe those dreams—if that’s what they were—were an exercise for my subconscious, a way for me to figure out what my life was supposed to be.

  Meanwhile, another part of me was refusing to accept the possibility that none of it actually happened. I remembered every moment, every sensory detail, clear as a bell. To me, it felt like weeks had passed since the last time I visited Gram in this room—because I had been living a different, separate life all that time.

  I sat forward again and slid my chair a little closer. “Here’s a question for you,” I said. “Do you remember Ethan’s friend, Chris?”

  Gram pursed her lips and cocked her head. “Was he the one who helped us clean out the garage that day?”

  “That’s right.”

  Her shoulders dropped. “Nope, I don’t remember him.”

  I laughed. “Well, you must remember something.”

  She shook her head. “I was inside baking in the kitchen. It was your grandfather who was out there telling them what to put into boxes and what to carry out to the curb. But I do remember we got rid of my old washing machine that day. Hallelujah!”

  “That’s right,” I replied with a laugh, then I sat back and regarded her intently. “Chris’s family moved to Seattle not long after Ethan died. Does that ring a bell?”

  She shook her head. “No. Should it?”

  I rested my temple on a finger. “I guess not, but he was in the dream, too. We got reacquainted and fell in love.”

  She raised both hands in the air. “So is that the happy ending?”

  I tilted my head to the side. “Sadly no. He had to go home to be with his ex-wife who had an accident and ended up in a wheelchair.”

  “His ex-wife! A wheelchair!” Gram let out a defeated sigh. “That’s always the way, isn’t it? Sounds like quite a dream.”

  Later that afternoon, when Gram needed a nap, I walked out of the hospital, got into the car and decided to drive out to the old Foster mansion, which I hadn’t seen since the night Ethan died—at least not in this life.

  It had been more than fifteen years since that horrific night, and I’d often thought about the brief time I’d spent in that house. It wasn’t a pleasant memory to evoke, but everything in my dream had disempowered that unpleasantness somehow. Today I felt an intimate connection to the house as I recalled the years I lived in it.

  I wondered who lived there now. For all I knew, it could be boarded up and covered with graffiti, but when I rounded the bend and arrived at the entrance to the long, private tree-lined lane, I was pleased to see a sign that indicated it had been converted into a historic inn: The Fraser House.

  How wonderful, I thought. That meant I could walk through the front door and wander around the lobby, perhaps even order a glass of wine and speak to the owner.

  Flicking my blinker, I hit the brakes, turned onto the private lane and drove up the hill.

  Chapter Fifty

  As soon as the white Georgian mansion came into view, I was overcome by a swell of joy so powerful, my eyes filled with tears and I began to cry and laugh at the same time. Though I hadn’t seen the house in many years and had spent less than an hour inside it with Ethan, I felt as if I were coming home. There were so many other memories here that felt as real as the steering wheel in my hands.

  My tires crunched over the white stones on the gravel driveway that had been expanded into a wide parking lot. Pulling the vehicle to a halt, I shut off the engine and peered up at the house. My heart raced at the thought of walking up those steps, but it was excitement, not fear that I felt.

  I dropped my keys into my purse, zipped it closed and got out of the car.

  * * *

  I moved slowly across the length of the veranda, stood at the ornamental parapet and watched a man and a woman at the edge of the lawn. They looked to be in their seventies and were seated in two brightly colored Adirondack chairs overlooking the sea. The chairs had been placed next to the sundial, which stood in the same place I remembered—from yesterday, it seemed.

  Certain th
ings were different, however. The new owners had added a winding stone pathway that led down to the sundial. You had to pass through a pink rose arbor to reach it.

  When I turned around, I noticed a new green-painted screen door, which was very welcoming with a sign directing me to walk in without knocking.

  I stepped inside, wiped my feet on the mat and looked around the entrance hall. Closing my eyes, I breathed deeply and relished the fact that it still smelled exactly the same—like dark wood and fresh flowers.

  Turning to the left, I entered what had once been my living room. It was now the lobby with an oak reception desk placed in front of the fireplace and a few sofas clustered together for cozy conversations.

  “Hi there,” a woman said, approaching me from behind. I jumped and turned to face her. She looked to be in her mid-sixties—an attractive lady who wore glasses. Her hair was swept into a loose french twist. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you,” she added. “Can I help you?”

  I swallowed hard and tried to speak coherently, when all of this felt very surreal. “Are you the owner? Mrs. Fraser?”

  She laughed. “I’m one of the owners, yes, but not Mrs. Fraser. That was the name of the family that built this house in 1840. We thought it appropriate to name the inn after them.”

  “Ah, that makes sense,” I replied. Then I stuck out my hand. “I’m Sylvie Nichols.”

  “And I’m Angela Carrington,” she said, shaking it.

  “How long has the inn been open?” In all the times I’d traveled to Portland to visit my grandparents since Ethan’s death, I’d never ventured out to Cape Elizabeth because the memories were too painful and I preferred to avoid them. I had never known—or wanted to know—what had become of this house. Until now.

  “My husband and I bought it about six years ago,” she told me. “It was on the market for quite some time. Where are you from?”