Forgiven (Book 3, The Watchers Trilogy; Young Adult Paranormal Romance) (28 page)

Brand took me home after that.  I cried until I had no tears left and fell asleep in his arms.

The next morning I walked over to the house we had been building for Utha Mae.  The construction crew wasn’t there because there was no longer a need to
keep building it
.  I knelt on the cold concrete staring up at the two by fours which had just been erected to frame out the
wall
s of the house.  A sense of loss overwhelmed me as my heart
felt like it would explode with grief
.  Before I knew it, the power of my grief ignited what remained of Utha Mae’s home sending
whirls of
flames and smoke in every direction
around me
.  The f
ire
didn’t burn me but
I felt my
clothe
s melt away
making me feel even more n
aked and vulnerable to
my
sorrow
.

I distantly heard Brand yelling my name but didn’t have the strength to open my eyes and answer him.  I
felt him
cradl
e
me to his chest
and phase us back home.  He kissed my
tear
swollen eyes desperately
asking what he could do to help me.  I didn’t have an answer for him.   I just clung to him until I cried myself to sleep once more.

When I dreamt, I didn’t find myself in my
Colorado
home
like I usually did
.  I was standing in front of someone else’s house. 
It was a small white clapboard house in the middle of
Dalton
, but it wasn’t the
Dalton
I had grown up in. 
Cars you see in old movie set in the 1950’s dotted the street and the air smelled a little cleaner than usual
.

“She wanted to see you one last time,” I heard God say beside me.  “She doesn’t like
to see your suffering
so she thought it might help
if
you s
aw
where she was now.”

He pointed to the front of the house.

“I’ll be right back, Harry,”
I heard Utha Mae say as she walked out the front door dressed in only a white silk robe.

“Well hurry back here woman, I’ve been without you long enough!”

The young Utha Mae walked to me with the happiest smile I have ever seen on her face.
  When she reached me, she pulled me into her arms and hugged me tightly to her. 

“Baby, you need to stop all this crying and be happy for me.”  When she pulled away, I could see
my sorrow
was dampening the joy she felt.  “I can’t take you being so sad when I’m so happy.”

“I just miss you,” I said, realizing the sorrow I felt was completely selfish. 

“I know you miss me, but you need to know I haven’t really left you. 
Why
even little Will never really left you when he died.  We’ll always be watching over you no matter what.”

“Always?” I asked slightly concerned Utha Mae might see things I didn’t want her to see, like moment’s when Brand and I were alone.

“Oh, not those times,” Utha Mae giggled
, seeming to know exactly what I was thinking.
  “But I’ll be there when you need me.  All you have to do is think of me, baby.  But stop mourning.  There’s no need.  I’m as happy as a junebug on a summer day.  And we’ll all be together when the time is right.  He’s told me that.”  Utha Mae looked over at God and smiled.

“Now you go back and have a happy life.  That’s my last wish for you.”

Utha Mae hugged me and turned to go back to her Harry.  When she reached the first step
of her house
, she
looke
d back
at
me
over her shoulder
.

“I’ve met them you know,” she said, completely confusing me as to who she was talking about.

“Met who?” I asked.

“Your children,” she answered
, a warm smile lighting up her face
.  “They are something to behold, Lilly Rayne.  You take good care of them like I took care of you.
”

Utha Mae winked at me and continued walking back into her house.

When I woke up, my tears were gone.  I knew Utha Mae was where she was meant to be.

I got out of bed and went to the bathroom.  I opened up the medicine cabinet and found my birth control pills.  One by one I punched the pills out of the packet and watched them drop into the toilet.  I flushed the
m down
and threw the empty packet into the trash.

The funeral was something I don’t think anyone in
Dalton
had seen for a long time.  There were at least as many
,
if not more
,
people at Utha Mae’s funeral as there were at my wedding.
  Over a hundred cars lined up to follow us to the gravesite after the funeral ceremony inside Utha Mae’s church.  I hoped Utha Mae was watching from
Heaven
but knew if she wasn’t she was spending some well deserved time in the arms of her Harry. 

Tara
was as strong as ever, never letting her emotions get the best of her when we put Utha Mae’s casket in the ground.  When we went back home, I pulled her aside and told her about the conversation I had with Utha Mae the night before.

“I had a similar dream,” she told me.  “Was it real?”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Well grandma was dressed in a white robe and this man told me she wanted to talk to me one last time.  She told me not to be sad for her because she was where she wanted to be.  She said to
watch over you because you would be facing some hard times but that you would pull through them.”

“Describe the man you saw,” I said.

From the description
Tara
gave me I knew it had been God.

“You’re pulling my leg right?”
Tara
questioned
after I told her who the man was
.

When I shook my head
,
I thought she might fall out.  I supposed realizing you had seen God could be like
that if you weren’t used to it happening every other day of your life.

“You know, I never realized my grandma was such a looker,”
Tara
said.

“Or someone who’d ever had sex,” I said.

When Tara and I looked at each other, we started to giggle.  Before we knew it we were crying for a completely different reason and it felt good.

The day after the funeral
Malcolm came to our house to tell us about the new developments
which we had been oblivious to.

“Have you not seen the news recently?”  Malcolm asked gently, knowing we had been busy dealing with the aftermath of Utha Mae’s passing.

“The news?” I asked.

Malcolm found the TV remote and
searched until he located
one of the cable news stations.

A male news caster was interviewing a woman in
Rome
with the
Vatican
in the background of the shot. 

“And who did you see?” the newscaster asked.

“I saw my
mo
ther,” the woman said, holding
the back of a shaking hand to her mouth
,
preventing
a sob.  “She looked so beautiful
,
l
ike she did when I was a little girl.”

“And when did she die?”

“Two years ago,” the woman completely lost it
then
and
had to be
carried away
by a man I presumed to be her husband
or boyfriend
as the camera zoomed in on the newscaster.

“It’s the same thing we’ve
been hearing all over the world
for the past couple of days.  People are seeing dead
relative
s
and friends
even
having conversations with them
and holding them
.  Unfortunately
,
not all the reunions are happy ones like the one this woman experienced with her mother.  We have heard tales of, what I can only call evil spirits, visit their victims and family members with deadly consequences.”

News footage of a bloody crime scene filled the screen.

“It’s the end of times,” a man was screaming into the camera.  “The ‘dead shall rise’, that’s what the Bible says!”

“This scene is the latest in a string of murders attributed to malevolent spirits.
The
police
say they’ve
never had so many unsolvable murders on
e
right
after the other.”

Malcolm turned the TV sound down to a minimum.

“I don’t understand,” I said, remembering my own experience with the ghost of Will, Harry and Utha Mae when she died.  “What’s going on?”

“I’ve consulted with the Watchers who are
experts in such
t
hing
s and they all
came to the same conclusion
,” Malcolm said.  “The veils are
weaken
ing.”

Brand’s body went stiff beside me.

“Are you certain?” Brand asked,
one of the few times I’d ever heard true
fear in his voice.

“It’s the only explanation that makes sense,” Malcolm said.

“Ok
,
you guys are scaring and confusing me,” I said.  “What are the veils and why are you guys so scared that they’re
weakening
?”

Malcolm looked around the kitchen and picked up a roll of paper
towels
.  He tore off one towel and laid it on the kitchen island
in front of me
.

“Think of the universe as being different layers,” he told me.  “Let’s say this first layer is the world you know.”  He tore off another towel.  “This layer represents a multitude of alternate realities
, u
niverses
similar to
your own but slightly different in some way.
”  He tore off another
towel
.  “This layer represents
Heaven
.
” He tore off another towel from the roll.  “And this layer represents
Hell
.
  Each veil is protected from one another
by a strong magnetic field
.  The
y’re
never supposed to meet but now they
are
.  They’re converging in on one another.”

“Has this ever happened before?” I asked.

“
Never to this degree,” Malcolm said.  “The universe
i
s in a constant flux of destruction and renewal.  Usually it
’
s kept in balance with neither one occurring more times tha
n
the other but according to the other Watchers there’s been more destruction happening than renewal.  The energy released during the destruction of a planet or galaxy has been building up over the past few years and that
’s
what’s causing the veils to thin
out
.”

“When did this start to happen?” I asked.  “Do they know?”

Malcolm looked to Brand.  “Could
we
speak
in private
for a moment?”

“Why?” I demanded.  “What are you afraid to say in front of me?”

“Dearest, please…” Malcolm begged, looking away from me, not wanting to meet my eyes.

“Say it Malcolm.”

Malcolm looked up at me and I knew he didn’t want to s
peak
his next words.

“The Watchers have calculated the exact day and time the universe began to fall apart.  In your time, it was
February 20,
1994
.”

I stared at Malcolm sure I had heard him wrong but knowing in my heart I hadn’t.

“That’s my birthday,” I said.

“Yes,” Malcolm said.  “It is.  You are something which shouldn’t exist, yet you do.  Your birth was like throwing a monkey wrench into the gears of the universe.  The longer you remain here, the more damage is done.”