Everything drained from her mind, leaving her relaxed. Whatever she had needed to do was done now. Finished.
She opened her eyes again, looking at the two men. “That’s it. It’s gone.”
“Gone?” Gage asked.
“Gone. The vividness is gone. It’s just like any memory now.”
Emma spoke. “That’s good. Now you’re free of it.”
Kerry poked around inside her own head as if she were using her tongue to find a sore tooth. “Yes,” she said presently. “It’s gone.” And with it all the pressure that had been working on her all day. Gone, too, was the sense of a presence. All of it, gone, and for the first time since the news had come on that morning, she felt like her old self.
“Thank God,” she said. A long sigh escaped her and she started to smile. “All right, that’s it. I told you. I hope it helps, but I’m done with it now.”
Gage rose and reached to shake her hand. “Thanks, Kerry. I appreciate it. You did help.”
Fifteen minutes later, Kerry closed the front door of her house behind her and locked it. Home surrounded her with welcoming familiarity. The smell of burned bacon still clouded the air, however, and she immediately headed for the kitchen to clean up the mess she’d left behind. The congealed grits still sat beside the stove, now in a condition to be used for glue. The blackened strip of bacon looked like a desiccated finger. All of it went into the garbage disposal, and the dishes to soak in hot soapy water.
She used a can of air freshener throughout the house, spraying it freely, because the smell of burned bacon kept trying to carry her back to that morning. She had to get rid of it. Soon a lemony scent had erased the reminder.
From the freezer she chose a prepackaged dinner because she didn’t feel like cooking today. Ordinarily she made herself do it because it was healthier, but cooking for one was rarely fun, and tonight she just couldn’t face it.
Something in her had changed today, she realized as she carried her microwaved dinner into the living room and reached for the TV remote. Ordinarily she didn’t notice the silence of her house, but she was feeling it now, oppressively. Usually she picked up a book, not the TV remote, and only if she didn’t have papers to grade.
She had a stack of essays waiting for her, plenty of books nearby, but she needed the companionship of sound, even the manufactured sounds of television. She chose a nature program about birds—the sound of their songs felt cheerful—and tried to focus on the narrator’s voice only to discover a gloomy description of the decreasing number of birds in the U.S.
Maybe she’d assign an essay on conservation or the environment next week. Or maybe not. Reaching for the remote, she began flipping through channels seeking anything that would shake the cloud of murk that seemed to have descended.
In the end, though, she quit trying to distract herself. The vision may have loosened its grip, but the fact that it had occurred remained a problem. Instead of looking at this morning’s experience directly, though, she chose instead to move back in time, to the moment when she had, as they said, “touched the light.”
She’d read all the explanations of the experience, from both the scientific and religious sides. But none of it could erase or in any way diminish her experience. As much as she had loved in her life, she had never known a love like that. Just remembering it still had the power to leave her feeling homesick, the only word she could think of that even approached the yearning she felt for that moment out of time.
Nor could anyone or anything convince her that that love wasn’t waiting for her when she died the final time.
She had managed to fit that life-altering experience into herself and her being, and used it as a touchstone, a constant reminder of what she owed her fellow humans, the world as a whole.
But now this. What the hell had happened this morning? Now that she was free of its stranglehold, she needed to explain it somehow. Deal with it. Find a way to slip it into the defined realm of possibilities in her life. Most people weren’t comfortable with loose ends and she certainly wasn’t.
Apparently, from the reaction she had received—unless Gage and Adrian had been indulging her—she had said something that got their attention. But what did it mean?
The sound of the front doorbell replaced silence with cheerful promise. She and her friends observed an “open-door” policy. Nobody needed an invitation or to make a phone call before dropping in.
But when she opened the door, she found not one of her friends, but instead Adrian Goddard. The sight so startled her that she didn’t greet him immediately.
“Sorry to drop by like this,” he said. “Do you have a minute to talk?”
“Sure,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. Stepping back, she allowed him to come inside, along with a gust of cold air.
“Winter’s not far away,” he remarked with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
“No, but this is my favorite time of year. Autumn is special. Would you like coffee or something?”
“No thanks. I don’t want to impose. Just a brief chat.”
She nodded and led him to the living room, wincing as she saw her solitary, hardly touched meal still sitting on the coffee table. Talk about revealing!
He settled on one end of the couch at her invitation, and she took the rocking chair that faced him kitty-corner. She reached for the remote and then shut off the TV.
“This isn’t official or anything,” he told her. In fact, she thought he looked awkward. “I was thinking as I was getting ready to drive home. How hard this must have been for you. What you saw, and having to tell us, then our reaction to it. I just wanted to make sure you’re all right.”
“All right?” She looked at the table with the microwave tray on it, at the glass of milk beside it, at the TV remote she had reached for because tonight she needed some kind of companionship. She could have called a friend, but that would have meant discussing this morning, the last thing she felt like doing. Then the conversation she wanted to avoid had walked through her door anyway. “I guess.”
“You guess? That doesn’t sound good.”
She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. I just found myself wondering what all right is. I mean…I’ve been coming home to this house for eight years, every night. I make myself a dinner, something usually better than this. Friends drop by. Sometimes I cook for all of us or go over to their places. But tonight nothing feels the same. I’m not sure anything is all right anymore.”
He nodded slowly. “Life does things like that. Without warning, everything’s off-center. It’s like you have to reinvent yourself.”
“That’s a good description.” She looked at him, taking in his attractive features. A little flutter reminded her she was a woman. “Tonight I feel like a stranger to myself.”
“I know that feeling. That’s why I stopped by. I could tell earlier you were having
