Page 47 of A Dark and Stormy Night

Take my hand, she said.

She was so confident. So sure.

I reached. I touched.

Her fingers closed around mine, warm, vibrant, alive in a way I could never have hoped or imagined. At last, at long last, I was able to step beyond the bounds of my prison and into her arms.

Love had freed me.

Sofia was so lovely. So real. So there. She glowed with happiness, glowed as she had after we made love and created our son.

She looked beyond me, toward our great-granddaughter. Areila, thank you. Thank you for finding my love. Thank you for letting me know how to locate him. From the day you were born, I knew you would be a blessing on our family.

Areila threw her a kiss. And then one to me.

Somehow, it reached me, made me feel as if I'd been hugged by a beloved child. Sofia, she reminds me of you.

Sofia laughed, a soft chime of merriment. Frank, she looks like you. Every time I gazed on her, I saw your face.

Really?I looked at Areila again, pleased to know I had left something of myself on this earth. I turned back to Sofia. But in her fierceness and determination, she is yours.

Ours,Sofia corrected. Our great-granddaughter. One of our descendants.

I cupped Sofia's face in my hands, stared into her warm brown eyes. I never meant to leave you alone.

I know that. I never doubted you.

The guilt and horror of so many lonely, helpless years slipped away from me. For all of these years, my heart was broken. At last . . . it is healed.

#

Time stopped. The space under the trees grew still and silent.

Kateri and Areila and Garik watched as the two ghostly forms reached, touched, combined, became one. The glow surrounding them grew to blinding proportions.

"It's love," Areila whispered. She spread her hands like a woman warming herself before a campfire. "We can see love."

The embrace of beyond enclosed the ghosts, enveloped them in warmth and welcome.

Abruptly they were gone.

Garik cleared his throat. "I guess they, um . . ."

"She never stopped looking for him." Kateri laughed a little. "She found him at last and they . . ."

"Love never dies." Areila blinked tears away. "They're together."

"Yeah." Garik pulled out his handkerchief and honked his nose.

The two women looked at each other in rueful amusement.

Then in a jarring return to the real world, action, light and noise lit up the darkness.

Cops arrived, pistols and flashlights out.

EMTs ran up with a stretcher. They shoved a breathing tube down Walt's throat, saved his life, and sent him to the hospital. They saved his life so he could face trial for murder. That's what they had been trained to do.

After briefing his men, Sheriff Jacobsen ordered them to set up strings of lights on the branches around the bare ground that Areila claimed as her great-grandfather's grave.

---