by Janet Rebhan
“I know. Sometimes fires make me wish I could be human. But then I see the downside, and I’m glad I’m only a guide. Still, there are some experiences you cannot enjoy fully without a real body.”
“So I’ve heard,” Aurora said. “It does seem that humans get the best and the worst of it.”
Thor glanced over his shoulder at the bare wall and momentarily narrowed his eyes, focusing his attention intently until a large wood-burning fireplace appeared, complete with natural rock hearth and wide wooden mantel. Then, as the fire crackled, he used his focus to create, one by one, a framed photo on the mantel of each of his subjects. First, he placed the infant Rachael, then Mary Anne Maynard, Nancy Kelley, Caroline Martin, and finally Jake Martin.
“Nice touch,” Aurora said. “I like that you included Mary Anne even though she’s on this side now. We should probably see if we can meet with her soon. Give her time first to become oriented. I’ll send out some thought waves and see if I get an answer. Her true soul mate in the life she just left was her sister, Leila. She may choose to try again to be with her.” She looked at the framed photos on the fireplace mantel. “How about putting my people up there too? And I’ll add some nice cello background music. How about Yo-Yo Ma playing Bach’s Suite no. 6 in D Major?”
“Um. Good idea.”
“And so it is,” Aurora said as she added the background music with just a quick thought.
Thor continued to focus until he had manifested the beautifully framed photos of Police Detective Mitch Coffey, Ragna Sweeney, Fiona Carlisle, Dr. Goodwin, and Deputy Sheriff Witkowsky. “Am I forgetting anyone?”
“Um, Caroline Martinez?”
“Yes, yes . . . the poor dear.”
“Oh, and Vito Gamboa.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I’m not kidding.”
“Isn’t he someone else’s charge? I mean, really, he’s like a way lower vibration after all.”
“Exactly, but our honoring his spirit will raise it somewhat. Not enough to change his circumstances, since he apparently is not open to receiving—he’s got many incarnations in his future. But even so, he is part of the overall design. We must honor his highest self if we want the best possible outcome for Rachael.”
“You’re so smart,” Thor said as he added Vito’s photo on the mantel and then turned around in his chair, tilting his head back and looking at the ceiling. He listened intently to the cello’s notes wafting around the room in dancing wavelike patterns. The colors were vibrant shades of violet and indigo, representative of the spiritual levels he and Aurora worked with. Most of the higher selves of their subjects were older souls, represented by specific aura colors. The musical notes kept them tuned in to the frequency of their subjects.
“Like I said, you’ll be where I am one day,” Aurora said as she read the vibratory patterns rising up and hovering at her level outside the window: thoughts and prayers uttered both silently and aloud, privately and publicly, consciously and unconsciously, made their way up through the layers of the higher heavenly realms of the ether, beyond the realm of creativity and inspiration, all the way to her level. Her level was known as the Park—the one just below Seventh Heaven.
By the time the thoughts reached her altitude, if they hadn’t dissolved first at some lower level, the patterns were almost void of emotion save for the emotion of love, which presented itself as a pure white light. Lower vibrations couldn’t exist at her altitude. There were other guides assigned to those levels.
In addition to answering calls for assistance, she was also responsible for greeting some of the newly arriving souls. Not all recently departed reentered at her level; only those who were evolved to a certain degree. Her level received only older, more advanced souls—those who had incarnated many times already. They usually needed time to readjust and evaluate their earthly lives before rejoining with their higher selves in Seventh Heaven.
Many of these returning souls discontinued reincarnation upon their return and ventured off to other dimensions or universes after being debriefed. Aurora was aware of these other worlds but had no knowledge of how they operated. She had only been taught that the soul was eternal, limited only by its imagination. And yet every earthly life lived was unique and had been chosen by the soul for a purpose, which enhanced its overall capacity to experience love, adventure, and bliss.
Aurora enjoyed her work and found it to be a rewarding job. She performed it with grace and ease, knowing full well everything was always in perfect and divine order, regardless of how it temporarily appeared to be on the Earth plane.
CHAPTER 9
“One more cup and I’ll get ready to go.” Jake said, tossing the morning newspaper aside. “Did you call the station?”
“Yes,” Caroline said, walking back into the kitchen area. “This time I asked for Sheriff Brady’s supervisor like you told me. The front desk deputy that answered the phone asked me what it was regarding, and I told him the whole story. He said the person we really should talk to is the detective that’s been assigned to the case. He explained to me that once there is a death involved, it’s no longer a routine accident, so it gets passed on to a detective to investigate. The detective wasn’t there when I called, but I got his name. It’s Witkowsky. He’s expected to be there within the hour.”
“Good deal. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“I guess I could have done all this sooner.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it, hon,” Jake said. “This has been an ordeal for you. We’ll get it all straightened out today.”
Jake stood and walked into the kitchen to refill his coffee. Looking out the window, he reached for the button on the Bose stereo he had recently installed under the cabinet. It was set to KUCS FM 91.5, a classical station with the motto, “Less talk, more Bach.” The sound of soothing cello strings filled the room. He listened momentarily, looking out the window at the roses Caroline had planted before her surgery. Without speaking, he placed his coffee cup down on the counter and walked over to the kitchen table. He picked the baby up out of her infant seat and cradled her in his arms. She had taken a brief nap while Caroline was in the office using the land line. Now she was awake again, content to look around the room and at Jake, seemingly absorbing all details for future reference.
“She is a cute little thing, isn’t she? Got some pretty big eyes there too. I wonder what her name is.”
Caroline watched her husband intently. She walked over to him and leaned her head on his shoulder. For a brief moment, she imagined the baby belonged to them, that they were a family. She locked her eyes on the baby’s face, on the large brown saucers that seemed to defy the enormity of her life’s circumstances. Caroline became lost in a feeling of profound unity for which she had no point of reference, sensing a warm quivering in her chest as if her heart were a tuning fork, the baby its fundamental frequency.
Jake was the first to move, and when he did, Caroline noticed he had a tear running down his cheek. They stood facing each other briefly before Jake offered the baby back to his wife.
“I’m going to take a shower. Do you have the address for the station we’re going to?”
“Yes,” Caroline said, “It’s the one on Agoura Road.” She took the baby in her arms and watched her husband as he walked upstairs. She knew something had just happened in his heart and mind, but he wasn’t one to discuss his feelings so readily. He was an attorney. He was analytical. Left brained. He was used to championing the rights of others, but he did so methodically, unemotionally. He had to. He wasn’t one to rethink his values or revisit a subject once he had closed it. Yet just now, Caroline thought he had perhaps broken this one rule. Perhaps he had felt it, too, the tuning fork sensation, the tugging of the heart strings. For Caroline, it was an all-out yanking.
She had only seen her husband cry a couple of times since she met him: once when his mother passed away; the other, when their son Pauley had almost succumbed to pneumonia when he was only f
ive.
Tears coursed down Caroline’s cheeks now, too, as she rocked the baby from side to side in her arms, shushing and cooing as if it were the baby and not herself who was troubled. She thought about how much she and Jake had once wanted a little girl. Why did it have to be biological? It didn’t, she knew. But this baby was not up for adoption. This baby was in fact illegally in her care whether that was her fault or not. Yet this baby felt like her baby. This baby had bonded with her in the last few days. How on earth was she going to be able to let her go today? Would the baby cry when she handed her over to the authorities? It didn’t make sense to Caroline why she couldn’t just keep her until they found the family to whom the baby belonged, but Caroline knew better. She was married to an attorney. She knew the law and how things worked. The baby would be turned over to child services and taken into a foster home. If there was no other family, she would be put up for adoption. And plenty of people had been waiting much longer than Caroline for a baby like this one.
The baby closed her eyes and slept in Caroline’s arms. Caroline sat back down on the sofa and let the calming cello music pummel her body like splashing ocean waves. She suddenly remembered a dream she’d had the night before. In the dream she had nursed a baby at her breast. She’d had the same dream on numerous occasions over a period of months now. Always, it left her feeling saddened because she was reminded she could no longer have a child. The child she now held in her arms had obviously reactivated her maternal yearning. But there was more to it than that. Caroline’s current dreams carried with them a feeling of urgency. In the last one, she had almost forgotten she even had a baby. Then she suddenly remembered the baby needed to be fed. She became upset she could have possibly forgotten to feed her own child. The dream ended with the baby being taken away before the feeding was finished.
There was a time Caroline remembered not placing too much value in her dreams. While she had always been a vivid dreamer and could remember her dreams readily, she had only recently begun to pay attention to any meaning or symbolism they might carry. This was because lately the dreams she’d had were more lucid and convincing. Sometimes they were prescient, like when she dreamed about attending the funeral of one of her good friends. Shortly afterward, the same friend had divorced her husband and moved out of state. Caroline had attempted to stay in touch with her through email and telephone calls, but the friend had changed. She had become a different person. It was a living death. Death of the friendship as it once was. Caroline then realized the dream she had was symbolic, not literal, yet still predictive. She became fascinated and began reading books on dream symbolism and intuition. It was then that her dreams of having a baby girl began in earnest.
The baby stirred now in Caroline’s arms. Caroline caressed her tiny foot, marveled at the size of her toenails. She opened her eyes and looked into Caroline’s face.
“You are an old soul, aren’t you, sweetheart?” said Caroline.
At this moment, Caroline became certain this girl was hers. She didn’t understand how. It was just a knowing she had. And she had learned in recent years to trust her knowing. This baby was meant for her. It was no accident they had crossed paths. It was no accident no one had claimed her, no one was looking for her. It was no accident the police and sheriffs had bungled the investigation over a jurisdictional issue, and Caroline had been allowed to keep her for three days. The warm heart sensation returned to Caroline’s chest as she focused again on the baby’s eyes. What if her recurring dream of having another child was the baby’s soul trying to communicate with her? What if she was supposed to have her baby girl and now the hysterectomy had prevented the possibility? As she looked into those large brown eyes she remembered the newborn in the hospital nursery, the one she had viewed through the glass partition before checking out, the one belonging to the young woman who had only momentarily shared a room with Caroline before going into delivery. Then Caroline’s mind flashed to the bloodied face of the young woman who had been killed in the car accident.
Caroline allowed her imagination to conjure a scenario that seemed as wild as any fiction she had ever read; yet on some level, in some strange way, she knew it to be real. She knew it to be true. She had seen this baby’s face before in the hospital nursery the day she checked out. She had seen the dead woman’s face before in her own hospital room. This baby she now held in her arms was meant somehow to be her baby.
Later, on the drive to the sheriff’s station, Caroline told Jake her suspicions about the baby—about having viewed her in the nursery and knowing now the dead woman was the same woman she had met in her hospital room. She left out the part about feeling as though the baby’s soul was trying to communicate with her through her dreams.
Jake was a logical man, not given to fantasy or spiritual matters. Yet he didn’t mind that his wife was open to such things. They kept each other in balance: Caroline liked knowing Jake would never allow her to go too far off on any emotional tangents; Jake unconsciously appreciated being able to experience the divine vicariously through his wife.
They had met when they were both in their third year of college at UCLA. Caroline saw Jake as studious and somewhat shy, but once he got comfortable around a person, he revealed a boyishly silly side. He was all logic and sophistication on the outside, full of humor and big dreams on the inside. He was going to have his own law firm, own his own comedy club, and publish a novel all before the age of thirty. As it turned out, he had started his own law firm by the time he turned twenty-eight, published a nonfiction book on environmental law by the age of thirty-five, and once a month, from the time the boys were little until they went off to college, he orchestrated Open Mic Night in the living room. Jake and the boys would write their own jokes and perform them on a makeshift stage where the dining room table usually stood, and Caroline would judge the winner, who usually got to pick where they would go for dessert that evening. If Pauley won, they always went for ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s—his preference was New York Super Fudge Chunk. Sammy liked the Black-Out Cake from Cheesecake Factory. Jake invariably requested Caroline make his and her favorite: homemade chocolate chip cookies prepared with large pieces of chopped Belgian chocolate. They were a family of chocolate lovers.
Jake listened in silence as Caroline recounted her revelations about the baby. He, too, remembered taking a peek at the baby with his wife before leaving the hospital that day, although he couldn’t remember what the infant looked like. When Caroline finished making her case, he made an uncharacteristic decision to reveal his own recent epiphany.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I had a dream last night,” Jake said.
While Caroline lay next to him, dreaming of nursing a baby, Jake had dreamed of taking a little girl around the age of two by the hand as they walked together in the park. She wore a long dress tied in the back with a bow and black patent-leather Mary Jane’s with a heavy ruffle of lace around white nylon ankle socks. She seemed to be very proud of her lacy fringe and shiny new shoes. She smiled up at him, and he focused on her large round eyes with long dark lashes. They were doll eyes, trusting. In the dream he felt the kind of tenderness he had only ever felt toward Caroline, except in the dream that tenderness had more of a raw quality. This he confided as he drove, looking straight ahead, never taking his eyes off the road.
By the time they were seated in front of L.A. County Sheriff Detective Witkowsky’s desk, Jake had agreed to look into the procedure for adopting the baby if it turned out there was no family to take custody. He loved his wife more than he loved any other person or thing. Her happiness mattered more than anything else to him, more than an early retirement and certainly more than any amount of money or difficulty. Caroline knew this, and she never asked him for anything he was not in agreement with unless it was important to her. And she assured Jake this was important. They both knew adopting the baby would be a long shot, but they were both on board to move forward in that direction.
The sheriff’s station re
minded Caroline of the public library. A plain brick building, it had ceiling-high rectangular windows and a clean, contemporary design. Inside the lobby, sunlight cascaded through skylights onto spacious tiled flooring. The stairway to the second story was open, illuminated by recessed lighting; the reception area was bare and broad, case files neatly arranged in rows of shelving in the background. Yet despite the sunlight and clean design, the ambiance seemed cold and indifferent.
The boxes and case files crowding Detective Witkowsky’s desk lent a little more warmth, even if their arrangement was somewhat chaotic. Caroline began to explain what had happened the night of the accident.
“So I show absolutely nothing in the file about a baby,” Detective Witkowsky said.
“It’s obvious not all the pertinent information got transferred from city police to county sheriffs that evening,” said Jake.
Caroline spoke before Witkowsky could reply. “Looking back on it all now, the young LAPD officer who first responded to the accident that night couldn’t wait to hand it over to the county sheriff. I don’t think he wanted the responsibility of dealing with a baby, especially since it wasn’t even his jurisdiction. After discussing things with my husband, I think now the police officer may have expected I would fill the sheriff in about that part. But at the time, I just assumed the sheriff had already been informed by the officer about everything. I mean, I was sitting in my car while they exchanged information across the road, so I don’t know what was said exactly. Add in the fact that the baby was already in my car because I’d had to drive four miles from the accident to get cell phone reception, and it makes sense why Deputy Brady would have thought the baby belonged to me. I understand that now.”
“Okay,” said Witkowsky, “I get why you had to leave the scene for cell phone reception to report the accident, but I don’t get why you felt you had to take the baby with you.”