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He had been naked as well and she remembered the temptation that had grabbed hold of her as she walked out of the water. It had been strong and more powerful than she felt equipped to handle. There had been a heat and an attraction toward the man she had previously loved and it had existed without the bonds of sex or lust. It had been a new feeling and had grown with each step she took toward the fi g tree. She reached him and held both hands 362
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in the air as she offered more than the innocent affections they had always known, more than she was allowed to offer.
She opened her eyes quickly and looked at the Billy who sat before her now. His face was the face she had always known. He was the one she had known fi rst. It was the face of Adam, her fi rst husband and the realization caused Heather to lose her breath.
She closed her eyes in an effort to calm herself but the image continued to play itself out. As Adam, he had tried to resist her but he couldn’t. He had responded to her and had taken what she had offered, committing the fi rst sin, the ultimate sin together. She knew He had been watching and she felt the sting of shame but had fallen prey to the lust that was so much stronger.
When they had fi nished and were wrapped in each other’s arms, a storm had taken over their perfect sky and the sea had rolled toward them angrily. The sight was an entity of its own and the image was the only recollection she had of her fi rst father.
They had never known a storm until that moment and she knew it had come as a direct result of their forbidden intimacy. In her memory, she looked for the notorious snake and the infamous apple but saw neither. She knew they had only been analogies for the lust that God hadn’t prepared for. There had been no devil and no unseen evil force aside from the sexual act they had committed. It had been their fault that the fate of humankind would have to pay for their priceless sins.
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Heather saw nothing more. She didn’t know what came after the storm or what had caused Adam to turn into the desperate and angry soul he had become. She didn’t know where she had been since their time together so long before and she didn’t care. Heather was reeling from the awareness and shocked that she had managed to forget it all.
Billy didn’t respond but just stared at her and her heart ached for him. She had loved him so completely once. They had been forced to part ways for what they had done but that’s all she remembered yet. Something wasn’t revealing itself to her.
“There’s no Satan, is there?” she asked.
He shook his head back and forth and let go of her hand, which he had been holding tightly throughout her internal show. She never let go of the eye contact but she backed slowly away from him. He didn’t move to stop her and she knew she had taken back the power when she had discovered the truth. She stood up slowly and didn’t panic when he mimicked her movements.
“Please, let go this time, Heather,” he cried.
Tears fell from his eyes at the same time a door slammed open from the other side of the tree. She took a step toward him and wiped his tears away.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
Part of her didn’t want to leave him but instinct told her it was time to go. She had learned enough and needed to deal with the rest of the rooms before her body died and her spirit fl oated away to places unknown.
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She stepped backwards to move away from him and toward the door. The room hadn’t cured her of her lust because her desire for him was still great but she refused to submit to the feeling. She fi nally had to force herself to break the stare as the last door beckoned. Her heart seized at the thought of what waited behind the door, secured with several thick locks. Heather realized someone had been serious about ensuring its continued closure and she was pretty certain that somebody was her.
She walked slowly toward the door and looked backwards when she was only a step away from it. She turned back to blow Billy a kiss goodbye. He caught it and closed it tightly in both hands.
“Bye, Billy,” she whispered softly.
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Chapter 30
Hate Me
The temperature jumped from cold to hot to cold again with each step further into the house. She felt like the uninvited guest in the home of three absent bears, hoping to fi nd a spot that was just right. The perfect spot welcomed her in a back room, just as it did Goldilocks.
Heather allowed herself to become comfortable in a place she should have feared.
A light fl ashed on and she realized she was at the center of a circular room, and that mirrors surrounded her at every turn. No matter which direction she walked, at the end of each fi fth step, the mirror ended and a new one began.
Each mirror had a light bulb at the top center that shed its own unique ray of light down upon its respective pane of glass. Heather watched herself in the mirrors as she paced back and forth, a harried expression and jerky movements marking each step. Suddenly, all of the light bulbs went out except for one. The one that remained still shone brightly and beckoned her attention. Heather didn’t 366
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want to give it any but knew she didn’t have a choice so she walked slowly toward the lit mirror.
As she neared its refl ections, she realized it no longer spit back images of current time. No longer did she stare into her own terrorized eyes and tear-streaked face.
Instead, she looked into the refl ections of different times and different places throughout her life. When viewed one after another, the scenes began to tell her a story.
It was an ugly tale that detailed the perils of envy, one she should have paid attention to long before. It was bizarre to watch moments of her life through only the refl ections of their memories. It was even more bizarre to learn that such an important lesson had been staring her in the face all along.
In the fi rst mirror, Heather saw herself as a girl about four years old. She was peeking around the corner, spying on Lisa and their father. They were playing “I Spy” at the breakfast table, enjoying a bowl of Lucky Charms together, just the two of them. She watched how Lisa smiled, happy to be with her dad and proud that he had chosen to spend the time with her.
Heather watched as her own young eyes turned to thin slits of green. She was taken back by the bright color.
The hue seemed uncomfortably symbolic of the sin she had obviously committed.
She donned the fi nger curls that her mom and grandmother had twirled out of thick, long strands.
Heather felt a passing sense of shame when she watched herself crossing tiny arms and sticking out her bottom 367
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lip. She was obviously unhappy and the source of her discomfort wasn’t hard to discern.
She watched as her child self patted her short red dress and tossed back her hair. She felt a stab of embarrassment as she watched herself jog into the kitchen, stealing attention from her sister as she jumped into their father’s lap. She fl inched at her own delighted giggles and at her father’s inability to share himself with more than one daughter at a time. She shrieked at the tickles he assaulted her with and he laughed at the adorableness of his middle child.
Heather shook her head back and forth before the mirror. She wanted to stop watching but couldn’t help herself anymore than a rubbernecker at a car accident. She wanted to close her eyes to the image of herself snuggling up against his chest and nestling comfortably in his lap.
She wanted to stop before she had a chance to see her ten-
year-old sister saunter away.
The child inside of her wanted to ignore the consequences of her jealous decisions and just move on to the next mirror but the grown up inside knew she couldn’t. The lesson wouldn’t be absorbed until she’d felt the sting of her own actions. Ignorance wouldn’t allow her to leave the room. Her heart was swallowed up by deep regret as she watched Lisa’s once h
appy face fall fl at.
The little blonde, who had only wanted a small piece of her father, had simply bowed her head and slunk away unnoticed.
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Heather didn’t remember the jealousy until that moment. She truly believed she had escaped the trappings of envy so had never bothered addressing it. She had forgotten the stinging bite of wanting what another already had. It was only after she watched her big sister crying on the stoop of the staircase that she allowed herself to walk to the next mirror.
At the sixth step, the refl ection changed and Heather stared back at herself as an older child. She walked up to her refl ection and put a hand on the mirror. She looked into her ten-year-old eyes and saw excitement in the ones that stared back.
Her younger self was preening before her own mirror as she prepared for a party. The birthday girl cone hat she wore told her she was staring back at her tenth birthday party and she wondered what had happened that day that qualifi ed for a lesson in envy.
She watched herself turn and run to the door after the doorbell ring. She saw herself open it to the most popular girls in her fi fth grade class. She had invited only the prettiest and the most well-known that year after deciding that her own friends weren’t good enough for her. She wanted the popularity and thought that surrounding herself with girls she didn’t even like would help her get what she wanted.
The doorbell rang again and her mother opened it to the friends she had pushed away. Laurie had invited them anyway and Heather was furious. She didn’t want 369
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their misfi t ways affecting the life she was trying to take for herself so she ignored them.
Her focus was only on the best of the best and she was thrilled when, as a group, they handed her a box with a big bowtie. She had known what was inside immediately.
The sheer yellow jacket that signifi ed being one of them waited under mere cardboard and tissue. She watched herself open the present and stared open mouthed into the mirror as she watched her young selfi sh self allow only her new friends to help her into it.
“Oh my God,” she gasped in real time. “What did I do?”
She looked at her small circle of real friends, ignored and embarrassed in a dark corner. Heather had completely avoided them throughout the whole party and again for weeks after. Only after her new friends blackened her eye and stole her bicycle did she return to the ones she never should have left in the fi rst place.
She didn’t rush to the next mirror. She was embarrassed by the girl she had sometimes been and wished she could take back the moments where she had harmed others. She hadn’t truly escaped jealousy but had simply beaten everyone else to the punch. She took what she wanted before anyone else had a chance and then inspired envy in them intentionally.
Subsequent mirrors played the audio of a question she had asked endless times.
“Am I your favorite?” she repeated again and again.
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She posed it to her doctors and to her teachers. She had asked her parents and her friends and her boyfriends.
She had consistently placed herself in a position to crawl toward the top, even if it meant leaving loved ones crying in her wake.
Heather tired of hearing the insecure question and was appropriately ashamed of the sins she had committed in the name of envy. She had to be the best at everything and when she wasn’t, she turned away from it. Instead of learning to appreciate life on other levels, she simply shunned it. If she couldn’t be the best, she didn’t want to fi ght. She wanted to change playing fi elds altogether.
Heather walked away from the mirrors with more understanding then when she fi rst faced them. She wished she had even a small chance at life so that she could mend her ways and make right where she had gone wrong.
Knowing there was no chance of her own survival, Heather pushed herself to fi nish. Finding the new door that would lead her out of the circular maze was diffi cult but she located it. It was beside the fi rst mirror and when she looked into it, she saw that Lisa still sat crying on the bottom step. She pulled her eyes away and walked quickly into the next room.
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Chapter 31
Imagine
She stood immobile in what appeared to be a police interrogation room. A large pane of glass took up an entire wall but she couldn’t see what secrets waited on the other side. The light in the adjacent room had been dimmed and it blocked out everything on its side. All she could make out were dark shadows that moved at times and at other times, remained very still.
To her right she noticed another, smaller room attached. The sweet scent of chocolate cookies and the comfortable feel of a television turned on lured her toward its partially opened door. Heather didn’t know which room held her last challenge but she felt a powerful pull to go back toward the two-way glass. Though her typical response would be to retreat to the shortcut, she couldn’t. She had come this far and planned to fi nish. She wondered what stage of death her body was in back in Jade’s world and prayed her family would be all right. She pictured her father standing up and caring for a minor graze but an image of his funeral kicked it out.
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Heather walked over to the chair that faced the glass wall and sat down. She glanced at the light switch and had to close her eyes against its draw. She knew that it planned to shine light on the other side and she wasn’t ready yet to see what was there. She had learned enough.
Discovering her identity as the fi rst woman in existence hadn’t shaken her the way she had imagined such news would. On the contrary, Heather felt more calm and more in control. Memories of the lives subsequent to her life as Eve revealed themselves gently and she stored them neatly in her mental fi le cabinet. They weren’t locked doors in a hidden hallway and they were available to her whenever she needed them. Her awareness had been unlocked.
She knew before walking in that she was about to face her own sloth and it worried her. The concern tried to steal the air from her lungs and she had to fi ght for each breath. She tried to remember on her own what she had so apathetic about that facing its results had become her ultimate challenge.
A door creaked and her chest felt as though it fell into her stomach. When the door opened wide enough, she saw clear shadows of two people whom she had loved dearly when they had shared her world with her. Their presence fi lled her with the love she had felt for them and her spirit was energized by the emotion. She knew the timing was no coincidence as she would need the strength and courage only love could offer. She gasped in too much air and gagged. She had missed them so much and couldn’t 373
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help but cry. She knew Damon’s parents were waiting to give her the rest of the answers.
“What’s happening?” she cried.
Of all the questions that fought to come out, it was all she could think to say. She wanted run to them and throw her arms around their soft, meaty shoulders but the feeling subsided quickly. When the light turned on to reveal them clearly, she didn’t need to touch them physically. The love between them was powerful and it provided the touch she needed.
They had been her second set of parents, ones she had chosen as a confused teenager; they were the grandparents to her fi rst son. They had been good to her and their hearts had been the purest she’d ever known.
Heather knew that they felt her love and that words were unnecessary.
They sat in the chairs that faced hers and Carol spoke fi rst.
“We’ve missed you, honey,” she smiled.
She glowed like an angel and Heather felt that touching her would be spiritually unlawful. The sound of her voice made Heather start to cry. When they died, a part of her had gone with them and Heather felt not only their presence but she also remembered their loss.
“What’s happening?” she asked again.
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“We’re here for your decision,” he answering, smiling.
“What am I deciding?” she asked.
Heather almost plugged her ears with her fi ngers to avoid hearing the answer.
“Don’t be afraid, Heather. You’ve already learned so much. There’s just a little bit left.”
“I’m scared,” Heather cried. “I remember who I was and I remember what happened with Adam but I don’t remember anything else. What am I deciding?”
“You’re deciding if the world should continue, of course,” Mickey answered.
Heather wasn’t certain she heard him right but her subconscious had already begun reacting. Her palms started to sweat and the shaking was impossible to contain. It was narcissistic to believe that she alone had the power to decide whether or not the world continued but then she remembered. This wasn’t the fi rst time she had this conversation and the déjà vu helped her to recall more. They had come to her before, in different bodies as different loved ones, but they had come before to tell her the same thing.
“I’ve been here before, haven’t I?” she asked.
“Yes, honey,” Carol answered. “Many, many times.”
“This was my punishment for seducing Adam.
How can sex be the ultimate sin when it’s so beautiful?”
Heather asked.
“Sex isn’t bad at all. In fact, it’s crucial. It wasn’t about the sex, Heather. You always forget that part and you 375
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get so caught up in it in every life you live. Sex wasn’t the sin. The sin was turning against the love of God and disobeying His orders. The sex would have come in time.