by Judith Post
It was a project going up and down stairs to move the air mattress to the studio. It was even worse, Thea decided, trying to sleep on it. It was comfortable enough, but Hannah moved a lot in her sleep. Probably restless. And Thea wasn’t sure that she liked a bed so close to the floor. It made the room look different.
It took her a long time to go to sleep, and she dreamed a lot. She was always running from something that was just about to grab her. When she jerked awake at four in the morning, she thought it was because of her latest unknown monster. Then she heard a rumble like thunder and decided a storm had wakened her. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. Lots of chair and table legs, but something was strange. She pushed herself onto an elbow and squinted at the floor. It glowed. She jumped to her feet, frightening poor Hannah half to death. The wooden paneling of the studio pulsed with red flames, and it looked as if the very walls were on fire.
“The bookmarks!” Thea looked overhead. The ceiling glowed, too, but there was no smoke, no crackling of wood.
“What is it?” she cried.
“Relax. Settle down.”
Thea frowned but didn’t see her sister.
“Lacey tried to seep in, unnoticed,” Aggie explained. “She was hoping if she was translucent and silent, I wouldn’t notice her. Fat chance!”
“Where are you? What’s wrong with the walls?” Thea asked.
“I’ve sealed them.”
“With what?”
“Me.”
Thea blinked. When she looked closer, she saw that the floor, walls, and ceiling flickered with energy. “You can do that?”
“I can. I’m still a healer, and I still have extra powers. I’m healing this studio. Nothing can get in right now, not even a germ.”
“Way to go!” Thea was impressed. Her studio looked like a cavern painted with molten lava, sparking and glowing.
“You can sleep again,” Aggie said. “You and Hannah are safe.”
Thea didn’t think sleep was possible. The mattress was one thing, but her walls were another. “Thanks for being here,” Thea said.
Aggie smiled. “My pleasure.”
Chapter 66
Nothing happened for the rest of the week, except that Thea got stiffer and grouchier from sleeping on a mattress on the studio floor. “I’m too old for this camping stuff,” she grumbled, as she pushed herself to her feet Sunday morning. “I can’t believe we thought this was fun when we were kids.”
“We were closer to the floor back then,” Aggie said.
“I need some coffee. I don’t know if I can take this much longer. Lacey might be able to stall long enough to kill me with aches.”
“At least you have old age,” Aggie said.
“Old age? I’m only forty-one.” She was going to fuss about that until she realized that her sister never made it to forty. “I’m sorry you missed so much.”
“Yeah, dying at thirty-eight sort of sucks.”
Thea nodded. “Hannah was only three when you had to leave her.”
Aggie sighed. “That’s the part I regret. This ghost mom thing isn’t the same.”
“Nothing in life’s what you expect,” Thea said. “Believe me.”
Aggie’s lips pinched together. “Sorry, here I am complaining about Hannah when you had to send Josh away.”
“He’ll be back,” Thea said. “I just hope he still talks to me when he comes home.”
“He’s going to thank you,” Aggie said.
Was he? Thea wondered. But she still thought she’d done the right thing. “Do you need to rest after last night?” Thea stretched and got ready to leave the studio.
“Give me a few hours, and I’ll be great. It will take Lacey longer to gather her energy. She’s still new at it.”
That made Thea feel safer. “See you again tonight,” she said, and headed down the stairs to her house.
Hannah went with her. “Will Lindsay get hurt?” she asked as they started work in the quilting studio. “If Lacey can’t do what they tell her to, will they do something mean to Lindsay?”
“Not yet,” Thea said. “If they hurt Lindsay, they’ve lost their control over Lacey. But if we keep blocking Lacey, I don’t know what will happen. If she’s no use to them, they might try something new.”
Hannah and Thea spent a couple of hours working on their quilting before they went to the kitchen to start some kind of lunch.
“It’s Sunday,” Hannah said. “It should be special.”
Thea hadn’t thawed anything, so she had to do some quick thinking. “Tilapia?” she asked. “And baked beans?”
“Perfect.”
They’d cooked and cleaned up when Cynthia pulled in the drive.
“I was wondering if Hannah would like to spend the afternoon with us,” she said. “Randall was supposed to pick up Toby today, but he called to say that he’s out of town on business. He has to close on some high-end property, and this is the only time the client can fly in and sign the papers. Toby sounded so frustrated when he talked to him that Randall offered to let us use his family’s lake cottage. That’s a first.”
Thea remembered the huge, stone cottage. It was only a half hour away from Emerald Hills, and Randall used it a lot for entertaining. It was never part of the marriage or divorce, since it was in some kind of family trust, (Randall’s parents’ way of ensuring it never left the family).
“The kids can swim, and I can take them boating,” Cynthia said. “How about it?”
Hannah looked at Thea. “Please?”
“Just be home before dark,” Thea said. “Or your mom will worry.”
“No problem,” Cynthia said. “I have to work in the gallery tomorrow.”
While Hannah ran to get her swimsuit, Thea asked Cynthia, “How’s it going? Has any of your furniture moved lately?”
“Just small stuff. Lacey doesn’t have her heart in it. This whole mess is taking its toll, though.”
After Cynthia and the kids left, Thea thought about that. Life always took its toll, no matter how hard a person tried to build security fences around her. She had Gabe, Cynthia married Randall, and Shari had Hank. They all thought they’d found happy-ever-after. But if life didn’t get them in one way, it zapped them in another.
And to prove that nothing could ever go easily, Rachel called. “I’m worried about Annabel,” she said. “She doesn’t want to get out of bed in the mornings. She’s tired all the time.”
“Has the doctor changed her medicine?” Thea asked.
“No, and when I took her in for an exam, he couldn’t find anything wrong with her. Said it was just old age.”
“Old age?” Thea had always thought that Annabel would never wear out or wind down. “What did the doctor say to do?”
“He said to call David and Muriel.”
Thea didn’t like the sound of that. “Did you?”
“They’ll be here as soon as they can,” Rachel said. “The sooner, the better. Annabel’s aura is changing color. It’s turning white.”
“White?” Before a person dies, his aura changes to different shades of white, depending on the life he led and how well he accepts his death.
“It’s bright and beautiful,” Rachel said, “so she’ll have a good death.”
Thea decided to talk to Gabe, to tell him that he might want to pop in and see his grandmother before it was too late.
Chapter 67
It was a beautiful June day, and Thea didn’t want to stay inside. She had way too many things on her mind and needed something to do. She ended up on her knees, in the dirt, lustily weeding her flowerbeds. She was ripping ground mint and dandelions out of her daylilies and irises when the vibes in the air shifted.
“Not now,” she pleaded, but the new soul ignored her and stepped toward the scale.
“Damn!” She brushed dirt off her hands and knees and hurried to the barn.
She sat down and poised her fingers above the small loom for bookmarks when she stopped, tilted her head, and got a surprise
. Rachel was running up the steps when Thea said, “Here. Take my place. I’ll be right back.”
“What? Where are you going?” Rachel’s eyes were huge and her fingers shook as they hovered over the threads.
“To the house. I need my spare loom. There are two of them, twins. This will be the perfect time for you to try your own weave.” Thea raced away, running flat out to the house to grab her purse, and bolting back with the spare loom.
She plopped down beside Rachel, the second wooden frame balanced on her lap, and hurriedly reached for another set of threads. “You do one; I’ll do the other,” she said.
“I’ve never done a bookmark before.”
“No time like the present. You’ve watched me and trained. You’ll be fine.”
They didn’t have time to discuss it. The first soul stepped on the scales.
“You first,” Rachel said. She watched as her mother’s fingers flew over the threads, weaving a nice, simple pattern with no big ups and no big downs.
Thea tied off the ends of the threads, took the bookmark from the loom, and released it. She could have hurriedly woven the next bookmark, too. Thank God, only one baby came out at a time, but this would be good training for Rachel. She turned to her daughter. “Now you.”
Rachel concentrated. At the first swing of the scale’s needle, she pulled pale-violet threads to weave into a loose, open pattern. It reminded Thea of something airy, ethereal. But then the threads became interspersed with tiny knots, making a nubby pattern. A red thread and blackish-green thread formed a touch and go pattern between the small knots. The girl’s parents wouldn’t handle her illnesses well, and they’d keep as much emotional distance as they possibly could. None of it seemed to bother the violet pattern of the girl as she grew to an adult. Then a pattern that Thea rarely saw emerged. Colors of every hue imaginable touched and left the violet threads of the girl’s life. They came and went over and over again. Thea had only seen this once before when she wove the bookmark of a dedicated, spinster school teacher. The woman made such an impression on the children she touched that their threads wove in and out of her entire life.
Rachel’s fingers pulled one color thread after another to weave this soul’s bookmark, but the tiny knots in the pale violet grew closer and closer as the bookmark lengthened until a large knot ended the pattern.
Thea put a hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “That was a difficult pattern. You did a wonderful job.”
Rachel looked up at her mother. Her face was pale, her lips pressed tightly together. “What was wrong with her?”
“She has a recurrent health problem,” Thea said. “But it never affects her attitude toward life or her generosity of spirit. Did you see all of the lives she touched?”
Rachel released the bookmark and pushed the loom away from her. “I hate this! I just hate it. I have to go.”
“But Rachel, this was a happy weave. The woman who was just born will be a remarkable person. She’ll be loved and respected. Violet stands for spirituality. She’s going to have a rich, fulfilling life.”
“And fight some health problem until it kills her!”
“But it doesn’t stop her,” Thea said.
“I don’t care. I have to go. I need Isak.” Rachel turned on her heel and left the studio.
Chapter 68
This time, Thea viciously ripped out weeds and tossed them to the side to die. Damn it! Was anything going to go right in her life?
The pile was growing, and her flower beds were looking barer and barer. She'd better stop before there was nothing left, not even the flowers. She decided to walk to town. Maybe she'd stop in to see Annabel. It sounded as though she was fading fast. Thea wiped her hands on her jeans, leaving new dirt smudges to blend with the old, and headed to the river. She'd follow Ruby Riverwalk to Annabel's old, three-story house. Sun glinted off the water, and life seemed to slow down a bit as the river meandered between its banks. A dragonfly darted out of a clump of cattails. She watched it fly farther down the bank to land on a fallen log. A duck paddled by.
A movement along the shore caught Thea's eye. She turned to see what it was. A young girl—probably twenty—was working in the spot that Josh used to favor. Sunlight filtered through the leaves of the tree she was under, making the scene appear like an impressionist's canvas. She was painting a small, ceramic figure that fit into the curve of her left hand.
Thea stopped and stared. The girl was tall and willowy. With hazel eyes and long, wavy, brown hair, she made Thea think of a wood nymph or how Thea used to picture the Greek goddess Diana. When the girl glanced up and saw her, Thea gave a welcoming smile. "What are you making?"
"Sorry?" The girl shook her head. She hadn't heard her.
Thea pointed to the figure in her left hand. "You're hard at work on something."
"A clay doll." Flustered, she gave a quick shake of her head. "This one isn't art. It's to help someone. I just have to have the colors right."
Thea walked closer. "Are you a new artist in town?"
"I hope to be. It's beautiful here. I love the old shops, all the trees, the river. . . I especially love the river."
"Is this the first time you've been here?"
A quick nod. "I'm Elyssa."
"A pretty name. It suits you. I'm Thea Patek."
The girl stiffened. Her eyes went wide. "Patek?"
Her reaction surprised Thea, but before she could ask about it, they were interrupted by the sound of footsteps. Thea turned to see Rachel coming to join them. "Mom!" Rachel hugged Thea close. "Isn't it great? She's a perfect match to our family, isn't she?"
"Our family?" Thea tried to hide her confusion. What was Rachel talking about?
"Elyssa's a healer, like Aggie. Josh still doesn't have a talent, but he married one. That was his destiny."
"Married one?" Thea looked at Elyssa. Elyssa looked away.
It was Rachel's turn to be confused. "Elyssa stayed here to make a doll of Annabel. Josh just left to find you and tell you the news."
"We must have crossed paths." Thea knew she should say something else, something deep and perceptive, but her brain wasn't functioning.
Elyssa and Rachel glanced at each other.
"I messed up," Rachel said clearly and distinctly. She was talking to Thea, but facing Elyssa. Thea felt even more confused, but then she realized that the girl must be hard of hearing. "Josh wanted to tell you," Rachel continued. "I ruined it all."
Just then, Josh's truck parked at the curb and he started toward them. He took one look at their faces and said, "Mom? I can explain."
Thea put a hand to her chest and fought for breath. It hadn't been that long ago that she'd talked on the phone with Josh. He hadn't mentioned a girl. There hadn't been a girl. What had he done? Did he grab the first person he liked and married her, so that he could come home?
“Don’t panic,” he said, reaching her side in a few, long strides. "We were on our way to see you, but I stopped at Rachel's first. I wasn't sure if you'd be happy I was back, but I found what I needed. Everything's going to be right again.”
Thea glanced at Elyssa. Young, like Rachel. Too young to be married. “How long have you known her?”
“Over a week.”
“A week?” Thea couldn’t keep her voice from cracking.
The girl saw the distress in Thea's eyes and her shoulders sagged. She clutched her little, ceramic figurine in a tight grip and turned to look out over the river.
“Wait till you get to know her, Mom.” Josh stomped the ground and called, "Elyssa?” When she didn't respond, he clapped his hands.
"She's not a dog!" Thea glared at him. Even if Elyssa had a hearing problem, he could think of something better than a stomp or clap. “Where did you meet, in California?”
“I never made it to California. I left Arizona and was driving through New Mexico when my truck broke down. I was stuck there for two days. It was destiny."
Rachel left them to go to Elyssa. She put an arm around her waist. "It
's going to be okay," she said.
Elyssa turned a worried glance to Josh and he motioned her to join them. She took a step backward, but Josh smiled. He wiggled a finger for her to come. She looked at Thea, didn't appear comforted, and refused to budge.
Josh sighed. "She's shy. She's afraid of you."
Thea watched Rachel motion toward the slope. She led Elyssa toward Annabel's house. Halfway there, they stopped and Elyssa showed Rachel the doll she'd painted. She shook her head sadly, a gesture of defeat. "What's she doing?"
"She's telling Rachel that there's no cure for Grandma."
"And she knows that. . .?" Thea let the question hang.
Josh gave his mother a small shove. "Go after her. Get to know her. Then you'll know it's all right. We're meant to be." When Thea hesitated, Josh turned and walked in the opposite direction, away from them. "Make her feel at home. Welcome her to the family," he called over his shoulder.
Damn it! This just wasn't her day! Thea struggled with her frustration, buried it for the moment, and ran after Elyssa and Rachel.
Elyssa didn't hear her coming until Thea fell into step beside her. Then the poor girl jumped, startled. Rachel beamed at her mother. "You're the best!" She gave Elyssa a quick hug of encouragement, then took off after Josh. Elyssa looked as though they'd left her in a den of lions. The girl's hands trembled and she stared at Thea nervously.
Thea tried a warm smile. "I'm Josh's mother."
"I know." Elyssa clutched the ceramic doll tighter.
"We got off to a bad start." Thea spoke loudly and distinctly.
"You don't like me." Not an accusation. Elyssa stated it as a sad reality.
Thea sighed. "Josh was meant to come back with a wife. That's why I sent him away."
"He told me." Her expression was troubled. "You don't think I'm the right one."
"I don’t know what to think. It all happened too fast.” Thea walked to the front porch of Annabel's house and sank onto the steps. She patted for Elyssa to join her. "May I see?"
