Metaphysical fiction. Read reincarnation story online . . .

Beginning of novel here…..

Chapter Two to the end…

Thirteen years ago, Daniel had met Terri.  Lindsay appreciated how the girls adored Terri, who made everything enchanting those first few weeks.  Haidee was six, Natalie seven, Melanie nine.

But Terri was never around after that and Daniel was seldom around.  Then, after almost five years of marriage, he evolved back into their lives full time. Lindsay, to this day, didn’t know what happened but, apparently, Terri walked out.

What Lindsay did know was during the period of Daniel dating Terri, then the first year of his marriage, she hauled herself through a paralyzing depression.

When Haidee was seventeen, going through the second drug rehab program, Lindsay had been around Daniel for a few hours as they painted the side of the house.  Hours later she was unsettled, aroused. She could barely breathe.

Haidee’s counselor mentioned her mood when they were reviewing the appointment schedule.  “You’ve been quiet the last few times I’ve seen you,”

“I’ve been really sad. I guess that’s what it is.”

And for once, she said it.

“A few weeks ago I got to see Daniel after he was away on vacation, and I realized something.  I remember, so easily, the first time I met him, every minute of him being around us, coming and going all these years.  I remember how peaceful he can be, how he brings rational judgment to every situation.  Talking to him about everything.  Waiting for him to show up for twenty years. Needing him to show up.”

She sighed, studying the counselor, who was listening raptly for anything to help Haidee and the family.  Was this information helpful, Lindsay wondered.  No one could hear anyway.  This didn’t count.

“I never told him,” she continued, for Haidee’s sake, if not her own.  “I believe I love him.”

“I believe you do,” the counselor said without judgment.  “Could you tell him?”

“I tried once, when he planned to marry.  He still married and my heart broke.  What could I ask, really.  He is Sam’s best friend.  I was married, we had the girls.”

“You could tell him again. Now.”

“He is Sam’s best friend.  I can’t– we can’t– we can’t hurt Sam.”  And she knew she spoke the truth for Daniel too.

They just couldn’t.  Never.

Lindsay sat on her bed at the cottage for several hours that night scribbling in the theme book.  She was still wearing her skirt and hooded sweatshirt.  The pink glow of lamps barely lit the pages she hoped she could read tomorrow.  These ideas had to be recorded.

She sketched the building dimensions and designated antique sections then those for tools and architectural salvage materials.  Booths for local artists, including in the tiny cottage.

Goodness!  She remembered, at one in the morning, she had left the vulnerable transplants in the yard and didn’t want to lose them to frost.  She slid into her mules, pulled a small flashlight from a basket by the French doors to the deck.  A full moon lit her path.  A wind gust pushed at the small of her back and reeled shadows of black branches from leafless trees over the cold ground.

The box of transplants was gone.  Oh goodness.  Stolen from here?  Lindsay felt a welt of anger raise on her forehead.  She lost her perennials, the cost of being sidetracked.

Maybe Sam moved them.  Since there wasn’t a garage, she searched along the front fence.  Near the old rusty mailbox, she discovered a plot of freshly dug earth surrounding a sheet covered with straw.  She peeked beneath to find the pale green and brown stems.  Sam.  He needed to stop overdoing.

Lindsay returned to her theme book.

She knew a folk artist creating scenes on antique windows.  Lindsay was going to invite her to rent the front of the cottage.  She planned the customer service functions.  The Wyann’s section, a tea and herb section, shelves for natural toiletries.  Chose her order of Cranberry Attic Candles.

Half past three in the morning Sam knocked on the door.  “Lindsay?”

“Hi.”  Her voice croaked.  “Come in, Sam.”

He shuffled across the room to balance on the edge of the dark sage wing chair.  “What are you doing still awake?”

She tried to smile but her face had gone to sleep without her.  “Brainstorming,” she managed.

“I need to go to the hospital.” He shook his head, not looking at her. “Maybe not.”

Lindsay scooted right onto her papers and calculator.  “Sam?”

“Blood in the urine again, too much–”

“Oh Sam, oh no Sam.”  He wouldn’t say he was in pain.  She was pulling on her robe, decided she didn’t need one and grabbed a jacket.

“You can dress, Lindsay, ‘cause I will.”

“You’re lounge pants are fine.  I’ll get your jacket, let’s just go.”

“Call your sister or Daniel to let the dogs out if we aren’t back.”

“I’ll call from Saint Andrew’s, Sam.”

They had an hour and a half drive.  She knew there was ambulance dispatch along their way, but they may not need to stop.

The drive through the dark night was almost over when Sam roused.  “I was fishing after my half-a-day turn yesterday, found a spot by this old wooden bridge, at this guy’s place by the cove.  Good fishing in the cove there, I can go out in waders.  But, you know I wouldn’t go over the bridge to get to the cove.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”  She knew Sam had a modified phobia of bridges, gephyrophobia.  He would only go under or around a wooden bridge, or through the water.

“Those waders are useless.  I slid in the mud under the bridge.  Wonder if that is what caused this,” he said grimacing as pain sliced through her own body in empathy for him.

“Or maybe digging the bed for my flowers,” she suggested but he shook his head, and said, “I didn’t dig anything.”

Goodness, well that was interesting.  Who planted the flowers?  She patted his hand, held on for a while.  “Sam, try to sleep now.  You won’t get much at the hospital.”

“You need to sleep more, Clara Rose, in case you have to play ambulance.  You need more rest, not staying up late like you just did.”

“I will, I promise. I’ll be okay.”

“Then show me,” he challenged as he dozed again. “Show me I can–” The full white moon shone on the back of his grizzly head.

Show you what, Sam, she thought.  You can leave?  Show me you can believe I’ll be all right without you?

Sometime around noon the next day, Lindsay barely steered her car over three miles an hour through the lake area.  Every bone in her body complained from weariness.  She could hardly tap energy to breathe.  She checked the sunvisor mirror for a true assessment of how she felt.  Her eyes were practically sightless with navy-blue stains beneath.  Her dark hair hung wearily along her too flat face.  But the cheeks were high and perky.  Lovely as always, she thought.  If only other parts of her middle-age physique remained so constant.

She parked the Crown Victoria on the southeast side of her house near Maimee’s front door.  And she sat there, windows up, mulling her case.

Their first night of this.  Coming home, alone, leaving him at the hospital to receive care she could not give.  Sitting here in the drive, knowing she had to sleep for both their sakes.  When all she wanted was to go back for him.

If she had gone to bed last night this wouldn’t be so difficult, she thought, angry with herself for her shortsightedness.  She had to keep a balance here.  She could have been fishing with Sam when he got off work.  She couldn’t wait another few days?  Just waited to transplant flowers and work out a business budget?

Lindsay practically crawled out of the car, trying not to notice her neighbor on the tiny front porch of her miniature bungalow flipping through a catalog, with Levis and a tucked in sweatshirt presumably keeping her warm

“I let your dogs out a couple times this morning,” Maimee called to Lindsay, some edge off her usual tone.  “I would hope you wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh?”  How?  Lindsay glanced from her cottage to Maimee.

“You wouldn’t want those two horses peeing in your house,” she said gruffly.

“Thank you, Maimee, I entirely forgot to call someone.”

“Well, you won’t ever have to as long as I’m here.”

“But… how?” Lindsay knew she locked the doors.

Maimee stood, stalking to the white door of her bungalow.  “You don’t think I’ve lived next door to that place for forty years and don’t have a key by now, do you?”

“Well, that’s– that’s–”  Nice?  Lindsay contemplated saying.  “That works,” she said instead.

Maimee scowled.  “You want it back?”

“No, no, Maimee.  It seems we’re going to need your help.  Really, thank you.”

“You’ve got it.”  She hurled her catalog inside and slammed the door then shooed Lindsay toward the white cottage, her long spindly legs piloting her down the steps without her holding onto the handrail.  “Now show me, where the dog food is and how many buckets do they eat.”

Lindsay led her into the mudroom, explaining that each dog ate two cups of food, breakfast and supper.  “Slow metabolism,” she said, and gestured to the bowls on the bench tables for tall dogs.  “There’s always water in the bowls.  Oh, and Maimee, please don’t ever let them stay out in the yard when you’re not right there.  Newfs are a favorite breed for dog ‘nappers.”

“Any other pets?”

She imagined Maimee with her other pets.  “I’ll take care of Itty and Fern,” she said, but she was too tired to explain they were skunks.  Anyway, they used a litter pan and would sleep through anything except smoke, mowers and vacuums.  All she had to do was toss raw vegetables and nuts on the floor in an emergency, lock her bedroom door and they wouldn’t miss her for half the day.

Maimee headed out the mudroom door.  “Get some sleep before you drive back to the hospital. He needs you to be rested with what he’s going through.”

Lindsay did have another question, but Maimee was gone.

Really though, how did she know about Sam at the hospital, and that the dogs even needed out?  Lindsay stood there, watching Garth and Susanna eat.  The extracurricular information line was impossibly active around Koontz Lake, she thought, remembering how Mr. Marshall knew she wanted a price on the complex.  Goodness, what if she ever really said anything to someone, or, heaven forbid, her actions were worthy of this gossip, goodness, the ideas that would come out of that information.

Maimee opened the door and stuck her springy-haired head inside.  “By the way.  There’s a crazy lady who lives here at the lake.  Have I mentioned her yet?  Don’t think so ‘cuz those dogs shook me up.  Now she is gonna be able to help you.  She will find all the artists you need for that old antique mall.  Now I know I mentioned that mall closing!”  She swirled her hand around her head.  “Don’t no one floating around here tell me I didn’t.”

Surreal, Lindsay thought, too tired to ask as she watched Maimee stalk away from the door.

A brief impression of her great-uncle cast over her dulled senses, so much she thought he was beside her for a second.  She always thought of Uncle Herron as ancient and spry.  He had to meet Maimee Storganaff.  No no, she would chew him up.

She was in her bedroom when she felt the first breath of the day float by her.  She was too tired, feeling drafts where none should be.  The change of weather breezing through the sparsely insulated cottage, surely.  But it was as if spring just breathed.

Lindsay realized that peri-menopause coming at her entirely too soon hadn’t hit the fan as harshly as this season’s  heart-renching transformation, which was sweeping them ever closer to Sam’s death.

Calm now… breathe…

Hoping his hospital lunch tray reached him by now, she stripped to cotton briefs and fluffy socks to crawl into bed at noon, fluffing up a huge hollow beneath the blankets for herself.

Weary enough to be less wary than ever in the last three decades, she tried to pray not to dream but only fell face downward into an engulfing sleep, cringing, just waiting. . .

A wide-eyed gray seal skidded through the doorway and onto the rug making her two lounging Newfoundlands raise their great heads to grumble.  Even both her skunks lifted their tails.  The dogs, the skunks, they saw the seal!  But goodness, she was dreaming if that creature was in her bedroom.

She struggled to open her eyes but hypnotizing light suspended her.  She was surrounded with heaven thrilling tones, and to make life more dismal, outlandish women wandered through her new cottage.  One of the two in long dresses was singing… the one with turquoise eyes.  A skinny older woman wore shorts.  Another tiny one with sleeves torn off her flannel shirt was pulsing a heartbeat on a flat leather drum.

Cranky Maimee slammed in the front door and thumped through the room with the cottage key on a neck chain.  The scrawly cat on Maimee’s shoulder clung to her floppy gray hair as the old woman slammed her exit so hard Lindsay jerked awake.

Goodness.

Certain the front door slammed, she bolted off the bed landing in front of the French doors to the living room, facing only one of four cottage entrances.

Nothing, except that inexplicable cluster of light bubbles.

She crouched low and hurried to the window, screening her near nudity with the white lace sheers as she ducked behind the towering wardrobe.  No one was in the yard.

She cringed from the icy fear in her spine, waiting.

Had they even gone?

Then a breath. . .  almost a breath floated by.

It was happening all over again.  After thirty years.

She realized this was the first night since Haidee’s birth that she hadn’t slept at least four hours, though she usually slept for nine.  All Lindsay’s life she was instilled to go to sleep even when others did not.  Slumber parties when other girls were awake until dawn, she was dreaming by midnight.  The dreaming started when she was really young and she always felt like she would miss a piece of life if she didn’t sleep, not if she didn’t stay awake.

Reassuringly, two gigantic black dogs rested on the bedroom rug watching her with great interest.  Lindsay realized if someone had been in her cottage, or if a presence of someone were here now, she would be informed. But the dogs were unperturbed.

Goodness, she knew the problem. She didn’t actually pray. She went back to her room, understanding fully the expression of ‘shaking in ones own skin’.

Through the veil of life where time is an illusion, dimensions and eras of time are not differentiated….

In an Ojibwe village at Manitowik Lake, in Northern Ontario near the eastern shore of Lake Superior and Old Woman Bay… during the twilight… Cay ro say sensed the Breath of Spring arrive.  The dreaded day had come to them.

She would never allow her family to be severed again. Lifetimes from now, she knew this grief would remind her to sacrifice… to keep the family as one because this change in her life today Cay ro say could not bear.

She linked her arm more securely with Wah tay see’s.  Her younger sister sang strong for their eldest sister and brother as they retreated by the northern hemlock path into skeletons of sugar maples.  Answering Wah tay see’s song for their new life, Brown Wolf, One Who Leads the Way, faced their family, raising his arm.

Cay ro say stepped higher on the rocks for him to see her, inhaling the stinging lake wind and praying at her biting resentment.

But she could do no more, not after the days spent praying Go ee yaw’s pride away.

Turn to us, please, she pleaded tightly within her breath.  But one of eight horses gifted by their village blocked her sister’s broad back from view.  The final realization.

Go ee yaw would never turn, she knew.  Her sister would stubbornly walk away, the-teacher-who-was-not-so-wise-after-all.

Cay ro say’s expectation in the moment was so heightened she cringed, waiting as she did for a dream.

A breath, a whisper, passed by her shoulder.

She had felt the veil open many times. But not at the noonday.

And the whisper?  A whimper of fear… yes, she heard now.  Though she did not know…. whose fear?  Yet someone so near to her heart she could touch them in comfort if only she had that comfort to give in this moment.

Convulsive sobs broke Wah tay see.  Cay ro say tried to sing and burning tears silenced her too, pain stabbing her throat.

Then, from the rise, lifted ever higher the shrill voices of their grandfather and grandmother.  Tall Heron and Scolding One, mourning, singing. Unfaltering..

Why were Go ee yaw and Brown Wolf so determined to give everything for the sake of their bond?  But Cay ro say knew this departure might well have included herself and her older brother, Mo wa sah.  If they had been given a choice by the Grandmothers, would they have left to be able to stay together?

If not for the dreams.  The people valued her dreams and would not ask her to choose.  Not at this time, they would not… because of what Dreamland sent.

.

Lindsay had slept three hours, just enough to feel like she had a head full of socks.  Yawning repetitiously, Lindsay dressed without taking a shower she was in such a hurry to return to Sam.  Fresh lingerie, her charcoal boucle’ skirt and black yarn cardigan.  She rolled black stockings to her knees and slipped on the black mules.

The phone rang when she was brushing her hair, thinking she needed to warm soup, she was so famished.  She answered in her bedroom, slumping on the edge of the rumpled bed.

“Did you eat?” Daniel asked, and she told him nothing since dinner last night.  “Don’t worry about it,” he said.  “I’ll have something when I get there in ten minutes.  Hey, I’ll drive you back over.  We’ll take your car to bring Sam home.”

He worked midnights last night but there he was, a few miles from Koontz Lake.  Her headache vibrated and she finally thought to agree with him and tell him good-bye.

Lindsay took the dogs outside before Daniel arrived.  She remembered the planted perennials and walked over to snoop for clues, arms folded around her, hands tucked inside the sleeves of her black cardigan.  The sheet was gone and straw lightly covered the flowerbed where plastic markers were sticking in the black earth.  She checked closer and found the flowers correctly labeled.

She heard Maimee hoarsely calling the dogs under her breath.  She tried to pretend she didn’t notice the dogs now at the south gate, watching Maimee place her scrawly gray cat on the hood of the old Buick.  Low in its throat the cat said, “Cwadow.”  Lindsay heard those distinct syllables all the way from her own yard.

“Here’s Cwadow,” Maimee encouraged Garth and Susanna.  “Get Cwadow, get him.”

Garth coiled his upper lip like he would just like to do that, his tongue slapping his nose.

“Garth–” Lindsay warned.

Maimee dropped a cardboard flat of dirt and stems over the fence.  “Here’s a bunch of achillea for your garden,” she said gruffly.  “It’s flathead yarrow, grows a foot, all colors.  Don’t have any more room for them.”

“Maimee, thank you,” Lindsay said, pleased.  She looked over at the dug earth.  “Maimee, do you know anything about these flowers being planted last night?”

“Good you got some straw on those.  They would’ve been shocked by the freeze coming.”  The old woman walked away.

Daniel brought her a sliced beef sandwich with horseradish, potato cakes and pineapple juice.  He had been to his favorite restaurant, besides Kelly’s Steak House.  She ate in the car, her life now speeding west on Highway 30.  She wadded the wrappers in the empty bag, then with one finger touched Daniel’s brown plaid jacket.

“What?” he asked, and gave her a grin that tipped sideways.

“Just checking to see if I’m awake.”

“Hey, why?”

“Today seems surreal.”  The second time she had used that word in a few hours, she thought.  “Things just keep happening without me asking.  But–” she took a deep breath, looked out the side window at flat scenery on the merely functional highway.  “But, if anything was surreal, I wouldn’t be journeying all the way back to a hospital ninety minutes away when my husband is dying.  Surreal or not, I would have had the foresight to move close to a hospital!”

“There are hospitals out here. Plymouth, South Bend, LaPorte, Valpo–”

“Sam just wants that one.  And I didn’t think beyond my needs.”

“Sure you did.  You got him to the lake to fish, didn’t you?”

“You’re right.  We need a pontoon now.  He slipped on the bank under the bridge yesterday.”

“Wooden bridge?” Daniel asked, grimacing, and Lindsay nodded, murmuring, “Mmmhmm,” so that Daniel laughed, no matter how much empathy he had for his friend.  “Big thunderhead could have stayed on the bridge.  But he would just fall off.”

“He will probably be released when we get there.”

“That’s good,” Daniel said.  “Hey, what was going on that they kept him?”

“You know,” she squeezed her eyes shut against the reality of the answer.  “They just don’t know. He won’t allow surgery.  He won’t go beyond blood work, an ultrasound or scan.  Or an MRI.  And definitely not another biopsy.  The specialists can only observe.”

Certainly, admittedly, she knew she was angry with Sam.  But she couldn’t blame him either.  “Ever since I married him, he has said he would never have chemo.  And nothing for life support.  He said it once a year, I swear, just so I wouldn’t forget.”

“He told me too. It’s been real important to him.”

“But there must be a way to help him, Daniel.”

They were told upon arriving at Saint Andrew’s that Sam was being kept over night.  He slept so soundly from the moment they got there that after five hours Lindsay and Daniel left a note for him.  So she wouldn’t disturb him, she whisper-kissed his cheek without touching him, and they left.

The Crown Victoria streaked the dark highway home.  Lindsay realized her inane chattering was getting on her own nerves.  She drifted into silence and rested her head on the seat to watch the lights of homes vanish behind them.

Daniel’s warm hand gently circled hers, offering support.  No words compared as he held her hand like he had so often over the years.  His energy pounded into her.

Almost forty minutes of screaming silence passed.  If she touched his face?

Wondering was pointless.  Daniel would pull back, he would be the strong one for them tonight, he would give them another day or year to contemplate choices.  ‘We’ll know when we’re right,’ he had told her nine years ago.

“Lindsay, if it’s all right, I’ll sleep upstairs in that extra bedroom.”

“Poor Daniel, you probably got less sleep than I did and you’re driving me.”

“I caught a few naps at work.  A few hours this morning before I came over.  I’m fine–”

“But too tired to persevere,” she filled in for him, and he patted her hand saying, “Absolutely fine, but too tired to persevere.”

Read Chapter Three here. . . .

Begin at beginning of novel here . . .

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