“How did you die?”
“I was very ill...very high fever, and a relentless pain in my side. My mother insisted I had the flu, and nothing more.”
“But it was something more.”
She turned to him. “Appendicitis. By the time I was taken to the hospital, it had ruptured. They tried surgery, but medicine was unrefined in the twenties. Peritonitis set in. I died a terrible, excruciating death.”
His death had been so simple...so ordinary, compared to hers. Just the thought of how she suffered caused a pain to squeeze his heart. She was such an angel, she didn’t deserve such a horrible death.
“I’m sorry,” he said, at a loss for words.
She shrugged in response. “Any way, I went on to a higher dimension to rest. I couldn’t rest after what happened to me...to members of my family. I think that may be why I’ve had so many problems since.”
This perked his attention. “What...what do you mean?”
“Within a few months of my death, my sister, Alice, married my fiancé, James. He was a firefighter. Four months after they married, he was killed when a burning floor collapsed beneath him while fighting a fire. A few months later, my sister gave birth to a baby boy, and my parents married her off to a respectable widower.”
“So, you couldn’t rest after your death because you were angry?” he ventured a guess.
“Angry!” she snapped. “I was angry, sad, jealous...you name it. My fiancé, who professed to love me, and only me, married my sister! What do you think?”
The emotion in her voice caused him to startle. “Did you look for James after his death...or doesn’t it work that way.”
“I have seen him. He is not the man he once was,” she stated ominously. “He’s just a shell of himself that wanders day after day, year after year. He doesn’t understand that he is dead. I tried to lead him in the right direction, but...” she paused and rubbed her bare arms. “I can do no more for him.”
For a moment, Reed silently wondered if the same fate that James suffered would have been his as well if it hadn’t been for Sara-Kate. Doomed to roam forever in shock and disbelief.
Sometime after, is when I became a spirit guide. I was assigned to watch over Laura, the girl I told you about.”
He remembered. “The girl who committed suicide.”
I tried everything in my powers to help her, to guide her to a better place, but she was just so...”
“Hell bent on killing herself.”
“She was a child, Reed. She didn’t think her life was worth living. I was devastated. I felt like such a failure.”
“Maybe, Sara, this was a lesson for you. That sometimes, no matter what you do, someone’s path in life is already set, and nothing you do will change that.”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Anyway, when I understood I could travel from dimension to dimension, and assume a human form, I went to work at an orphanage. I enjoyed my time there so much.”
Although he couldn’t see her face, he could hear a calmness in her voice. “That must have been so fulfilling. You would be a great mother.”
“It’s all I ever wanted was to be a wife and a mother. I guess that’s never going to happen now.”
Tears pricked his eyes, and he was surprised by the emotion that flooded over his being. He had never been in love before. Infatuated maybe, but never full blown love like he felt for Sara-Kate. Now he may have lost his chance to be with her, to possibly live a forever life with her. A new life, different from the past, but one he could face, if he still had Sara. He didn’t know if they could procreate in their state, but they surely could be married.
“Any way, after some years passed, I knew it was time to move on. That is when I moved to the house, and started Sara-Kate’s Spirit. I just sort of shut myself in, and the months and the years just seemed to blend together. There really isn’t much more to tell.”
There was so much more to tell! Didn’t she understand that? Maybe now wasn’t the right to push. Maybe it was for the best to let it all unfold over time.
“I love you, Sara-Kate.”
For a few moments, nothing but the squeak of the swing chains sounded. Then she spoke.
“You don’t love me, Reed. Perhaps at some point you thought you did. That was just because of what I am. I’ll never know who truly loves me, and who only loves me because I’m different from what they are.”
“That is so untrue...”
“Reed, I would really like to go home now,” she cut him off before he could finish the thought. Obviously, this conversation was over, at least Sara-Kate’s part of it. She wouldn’t believe anything he told her at that moment.
“Okay, let’s go home.”
***
Sara-Kate uttered not one single word the entire walk home. When they reached the house, she disappeared up the stairs, leaving Reed at a loss for how to make things better between them. From her affect, Sara wanted nothing more to do with him. Perhaps in her mind, they were through.
He went to the kitchen and prepared a cup of tea for her. A small gesture for sure, but right now he would do anything to keep her from further closing him out of her life.
When he arrived upstairs, she was just coming from the shower, wrapped in a pink bathrobe. She walked straight passed him without an acknowledgement. He followed her into the bedroom, but as she slid the robe from her shoulders and got into bed, she continued to act as though he wasn’t there.
“I brought you a cup of tea, Sara,” he said awkwardly, and set the cup on her bedside table. “I’ll get the orders packed and ready to go, and wait up for the courier.”
“Don’t bother, Reed. The business is no longer at the forefront of my
