“That’s not possible.” Maggie was gripping Sarah, scaring her more that she already was. “He shot flames from his hands.”
“What are you talking about?” Sarah tried to pull from her grip. “Maggie, what’s wrong with you?”
“Maggie!”
Maggie came out of her trance. She pulled Sarah toward Nathan.
“Give me her hand.”
Maggie pulled Sarah’s hand down. Nathan tried to put the ring on her shaking finger, but he passed right through her.
He was hit by another line of fire. This time the pain took his breath away.
Maggie slid the ring on Sarah’s finger. “Can you see Nathan?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sarah was almost as hysterical as Maggie. “Who’s Nathan?”
Maggie turned to Henry. “It doesn’t work.”
“It’s because you’re mortal,” Henry dodged Cole’s flames.
Nathan saw the change in Henry. Because he was assigned to Sarah’s case, Henry had the power to make himself appear to her. Nathan knew it worked because he saw the terror in Sarah’s eyes.
Henry snatched up the ring and placed it on Sarah’s finger.
Sarah looked his way. “N-Nathan?”
A sound beyond reason came from Cole. In a split second, Cole shifted into the horse-like form. Smoke and flames were everywhere. Then in an instant, he saw Michael.
Smoke thickened, blackened beyond vision. The flames lessened as Cole’s screams became tortured.
And suddenly Cole was gone.
Everyone backed away except Nathan. He was in too much pain.
Michael approached him, put his hands Nathan’s back. He cried out with agony that was too much to bear.
And suddenly his pain was gone.
“Come home, Nathan,” Michael said, then he disappeared.
* * *
Nathan spent two weeks with Sarah before he was summoned to heaven. The two weeks passed as quickly as two days, but they were enough for Sarah to receive the medical help she needed. She had the operation to remove the blood clot from her brain, and she would live.
Now, still wondering how she was faring and thinking of his goodbye to her this morning, Nathan sat on the witness stand and listened as Father James made his closing statement which might influence the jury’s decision in deciding his fate.
“Nathan McGraw brought a mortal to heaven before her time.” Father paced before the jury. “He had all intension of selling his soul to a messenger of the Dark One, and, with the aid of Henry Schuyler, he is responsible for altering the path of life and death for Sarah Price, the mortal he was assigned to escort to heaven. But he also saved a life. Sarah’s life.”
Father gripped the jury stand which was made up of Elders, Angels, and Archangels. “Isn’t that God’s ultimate goal? To preserve life at all costs?”
The jury whispered among themselves. Nathan didn’t know what would become of him if they decided to cast him from heaven. When Michael had explained it to him, he hadn’t dared ask. Either way, he would never see Sarah again. He knew that now, and even though it ripped his heart out, he accepted it. Because she would live.
Michael, sitting before the other jurors, nodded.
“Nathan was in love.” Father continued. “He may have chose the wrong path, but his actions were all motivated by love.”
“Yes, but consider Adam and Eve.” The Elder called Joshua noted. His comment was followed by even more whispers.
“Are we not all about forgiveness?” Father retaliated. “Nathan gave the ultimate sacrifice, his eternal life for Sarah’s mortality and happiness. He broke the rules for the ultimate self sacrifice. For this reason Nathan should be pardoned.”
Nathan sat on the stand for what seemed like years. He stared in silence as the Jurors disappeared to another room to ponder a decision. In the back of the court, he heard his mother, Anne, and Jane weeping. He couldn’t look at them anymore than he could Pa or John. Looking at them would bring guilt and a sense of betrayal, even though he didn’t regret one single thing.
Sarah would live now.
Finally, the jurors came back.
“How do you find the defendant?” the one called Gabriel asked.
“Pardoned.”
Nathan didn’t realize the degree of his relief until it came out in heavy, gut wrenching sobs. His family ran to the head of the courtroom, but were ushered back by the sentinels.
After the court had quieted, Father James approached the jury. “I wish to partition the court for one more thing. Since Nathan’s life was cut short, I ask that he be allowed a second chance.”
“We just gave him one,” Michael answered.
“No, I mean a second chance at life.”
* * *
Sarah sat in the wheelchair as the nurse discharged her. Her mother and Maggie held each of her hands as the nurse wheeled her down the hall and outside where Claudia, Stan, and Therman waited to see her home.
They helped her get in the back of Therman’s big Lincoln. Maggie and Claudia hugged her goodbye as Stan and her mother got in the front.
Gingerly, she touched the pewter ring on her finger. Nathan was with her during the operation. She remembered nothing of the procedure, but she’d been with him. He had taken her to his mother’s house and she had eaten dinner with him and his family. She asked if she was dead, but they assured that she was not. When she woke up, Nathan was still with her, until this morning when he said he had to go.
She didn’t care that he was dead. She wanted to be with him. Even if they wouldn’t be together forever.
It was over four months before she was able to work a full day in the store. She no longer had to wear hats to cover her incision, and her hair was just beginning to reach mid-ear. Mom had moved to Lake George permanently, and Sarah had asked her to be partners with her. She and Therman were dating regularly now.
It was an hour since Claudia had left for her night classes at Adirondack Community College. Business was slow, so Sarah closed early. It was okay to take it easy. That was the one thing she’d learned since nearly dying. That and to take nothing for granted.
She slipped on her jacket and scarf and walked outside, as had become her nightly routine. The early December air was biting, but there was still no snow on the ground yet.
She walked past Sheppard Park, turned and made her way along the boardwalk where the steamboat company had their tour boats docked for the winter.
To her right, Fort William Henry overlooked the lake like a dark reminder of a tragic past. Tears welled in her eyes as she stared at it and recalled the first time she’d met Nathan that day which seemed like only yesterday. Nathan was gone. He would never come back, she realized now. He’d saved more than her life by coming here. He made her love again. He gave that to her. It was something she’d lost, and he’d given it back. And she would never forget him or stop loving him.
She thought she saw someone moving atop the fortress wall but quickly dismissed it. The fort was closed for the season. No one would be up there now.
She saw it again.
Sarah’s heart raced. It couldn’t be.
She hurriedly crossed the empty street, ran up the steps toward the fort entrance.
Nathan met her at the top of the hill.
Sarah crashed into him, held him as if he were imagination and would fade from existence.
“Nathan, you—you came back.” She kissed him, tasted his lips and the salt which flowed from both their tears. “I missed you. I missed you so much.”
“How are you feeling?”
“All right.”
Nathan gingerly inspected the place on her head where they had operated. “Are you in any pain?”
“It’s getting better.” She held him at arm’s length. He was dressed in modern clothes, jeans sweater, and a jacket. She cradled his face in her hands. “You’re not cold. Nathan, you’re not cold!”
“They gave me another chance.” He took her
hand and led her down the stairs, back across the street where he sat her down at one of the benches that overlooked the lake. “I want to show you something.”
He handed her a roll of papers.
“It’s a deed.”
And a blueprint.
“French Mountain wasn’t for sale, but I found property with two strong oak trees on it. The contractor said oak was the best.”
“What are you talking about?”
He spread the blueprint out between them. It was labeled White Oak Tree house Contractors.
“A tree house? I don’t understand.
You’re having someone build a tree house for you?”
“For us.”
She didn’t understand.
He was grinning from ear to ear. “Maybe I should give you this first.”
He took a ring from his front pocket.
“Will you be my wife, Sarah?”
“But—“
He took her hand, pushed the ring on her left ring finger. It was brilliant gold with a tiny diamond centered on the band.
The tears came again. She held his hand in both of hers, still amazed that it wasn’t ice cold. “You feel so warm. Nathan, you’re not dead. I still can’t believe it.”
“They gave me a second chance.”
“What about your family? You can never see them?”
“Not until I die.”
“What about when I die?”
“We get to be together.” He was smiling.
It all seemed surreal. And after being through so much, she still couldn’t be sure.
She picked up a discarded soda can from under the bench, took Nathan’s finger, and sliced it along the sharp opening.
“Ow!”
It bled. And it made no attempt to heal.
She suddenly couldn’t stop crying.
Nathan gathered her in his arms. He quietly rocked her back and forth until she calmed down.
“So are you going to marry me or not?” he asked at last.
“Yes.”
“Good, because I don’t have a job, and we’re going to need to put a down payment on this tree house.”
She kissed him long and deliberate. She wouldn’t worry about that now. They were together. They would pay for the house somehow. All that mattered was that they would both live.
“There’s one more thing I have to do.” Taking her hand, he started to remove the pewter band on her right finger. “I was only allowed to come back if I took this.”
“But I’ll forget you.” Sarah pulled back. “I don’t ever want to forget you again.”
“Not me, love. Only the things heaven does not wish us to know.” Nathan removed the ring in one quick move and flung it into the still unfrozen lake.
Sarah stared at her fiancé. “What did you just throw in?”
Nathan was silent for a long while. “A rock I guess. I don’t really remember.” He looked down at his finger. “I’m bleeding.”
“Let me see. What did you do?”
“I have no idea.”
She wiped the blood from his finger then kissed it.
Nathan rolled up the tree house blueprints. She took his hand and allowed him to lead her back to her bookstore. She would ask him to stay with her tonight. That was, unless Mom was still up.
Nathan had proposed tonight. She wondered how long she’d waited for it, wondered if it had something to do with her surgery and decided it didn’t matter. Nathan had been in her life so long—
How long had it been? She tried to recall how they’d met but couldn’t.
She stopped. She mentally battled her frustration. She had lost some of her memory after having the aneurysm removed. Her doctor said it would likely return, but it still made her angry.
“Nathan, how did we meet?”
“College,” he answered. “I asked you out, but you went for that loser you married.”
Sarah remembered now. “Good thing I divorced him.” She teased.
He pulled her to him. “Try not to get upset. You’re memory will come back. What matters is that we’re together, and we’re going to stay together.”
She nodded. She’d never met anyone she loved more. And they would work everything out: the down payment on the tree house, her recovery, the fact that Art was trying to sue her for throwing his grandmother’s rings into Lake George. They would work it out, and they would be happy.
No matter what.
Ghost Of A Chance Page 20