Miracle of Love

by Victoria Chancellor

She couldn't answer. All she could do was stand and stare at her own quilt, lying so innocently across Kathleen Kirby's bed.

  "Would you excuse us for just a minute. My wife's not feeling well," Grant said to the woman. Maybe if you could get her a glass of water from downstairs . . ."

  "Of course. Sit down, dear, and I'll be right back."

  The woman's footsteps echoed down the hallway.

  Erina walked slowly toward the bed.

  "Sweetheart, why don't you sit down? You're as white as a sheet. You look like you've seen a ghost."

  "I have," she whispered.

  Grant caught her arm. "Erina, you've got me worried."

  "I . . ." Colin began to fuss and reached out his little arms. "Let me hold my son," she said softly. "I need to hold Colin."

  The nightmare she'd experienced at Grant's condo came back to haunt her. Suddenly, holding on to her son seemed the most important thing in her life. She mustn't let him go. She mustn't lose her son."

  "Erina, talk to me. What's going on?"

  "This is my quilt," she said softly, moving closer to the bed. "I made this quilt after I left Kirby House--after Jerrold . . . and I used the scraps from different gowns I worked on."

  She stopped near the foot of the bed. "But when I left, it wasn't finished. I'd never embroidered any of this," she said, pointing to the pieces that contained the tiny stitches she'd learned as a child. "See here. It's the rocking chair you bought for me. And our initials inside the heart." Tears filled her eyes.

  Grant stood beside her, worry and a growing sense of panic reflected in his handsome features. "Erina, let's get out of here. You're really scaring me."

  "Do you see? Don't you know what this mean?" Tears rolled down her face as Colin began to squirm and cry. "I'm going back. All along, I've been fooling myself into thinking that I could stay with you when . . ."

  "Erina, no. That's not what this means. This is some kind of joke, some--"

  "Oh, Grant, if only you could believe." She wanted to touch him, to feel his warmth and share her love one more time. But even as she swayed toward him, she felt the pull of the past. Looking back at the quilt, her fingers reached out and traced the pattern of the heart.

  "I love you Grant," she whispered.

  "Erina!"

  And then there was nothing but the blinding white light.

  #

  "Erina!"

  Grant screamed her name, thrust his hand toward the blinding flash of light. Too late! Like the flash powder in a magician's act, she'd disappeared into the brightness.

  "Erina!" he cried again, running around the room, looking for some explanation. Some trap door. Something to prove that what he'd just witnessed hadn't really happened. But the floor beneath the bed was solid, with no sign that anything unusual had just happened here.

  He reached out and touched the quilt. Just as she'd said, a rocking chair was embroidered on velvet, bordered by intricate stitches in a soft gray. And on another square the heart, made of tiny loops of red with their initials inside. E.O. and G.K.

  "Oh, my God."

  "What's wrong, Mr. Kirby?"

  The tour guide came into the room with a glass of water and a wet rag. "Where's Mrs. Kirby?"

  Grant stood there staring at her, his heart pounding, unable to answer her. What could he say? That one minute Erina and Colin had been standing there by the bed, and the next she'd vanished in a blinding flash of light?

  It was impossible, it was unbelievable . . .

  If only you could believe. She'd said those words to him before she disappeared. And she'd said that she loved him. She'd never said that before. Why would she say it now, then vanish?

  Why?

  "Mr. Kirby?"

  "She's gone," he whispered into the stillness of the room.

  "What do you mean? Did she and the baby leave the house?"

  "She's gone," was all he could whisper as he walked through the doorway.

  "Mr. Kirby!"

  He ran down the stairs, but when he got to the bottom, he had no idea where to go, what to do. When he heard the footsteps of the tour guide behind him, he ran out the front doors of Kirby House.

  "Erina!" Looking right and left, he ran toward the Jeep. Where was she? She hadn't left him. She hadn't.

  When he reached the car and she wasn't there, he felt like collapsing in defeat. At the same time, he wanted to run through the streets and call out her name. He wanted to throw himself on the ground and pound his fists against the earth. He wanted to rant to the heavens.

  "Oh, God." It was true. It was all true. All her stories, all her claims to be from the past. There was no record of Erina O'Shea in the present because she'd never been here before she'd appeared in his condo. There was nothing wrong with his security system. She hadn't sneaked inside and hidden for hours with Colin.

  She really was from the past and he'd lost her. Just when he . . .

  Grant dropped to his knees on the hard asphalt, tears filling his eyes. "I love you, Erina," he said aloud, looking into the clear blue sky. "I love you. I believe you."

  But only silence greeted his labored breathing and his tears. The silence of his lonely years, the void of his life without his wife, his love, his Erina.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  "Erina?"

  She spun around at the voice. Standing in the doorway was Mrs. Abernathy, dressed in her nightclothes, a muslin cap on her gray hair. She held an oil lamp in her hand, filling the room with soft light. "Where have you been, girl? And what was that noise?"

  "Noise?"

  "Sounded like the pop of a fire, it did."

  "I . . . I don't know."

  Mrs. Abernathy walked over to her and placed her hand on Erina's forehead. "You feel warm. Are you coming down with a cold?"

  "No, I don't . . . Mrs. Abernathy, what day is this?"

  "What kind of question is that? Why, it's Thursday?"

  "What's the date?"

  "You are running a fever. Let's get you to bed. I have no idea why you're up and dressed at this hour of the night."

  "Please, what's the date?"

  "Let's see," Mrs. Abernathy said, rubbing her chin. "It's October the eighth, near midnight." She hooked her arm through Erina's and led her toward the bed. "Where in the world did you get those clothes? Why, the skirt's a scandal? Have you been out like that?"

  "Yes, I've been to the church." And she'd come back in time to her own apartment, just minutes after she'd left.

  Oh, Grant. Where are you? What's going on inside your mind? Do you believe me now? All she wanted to do was sink down on the bed and cry.

  "At this time of night? What were you thinking?"

  "Colin was so ill," she said automatically, her voice sounding flat and lifeless. When she looked down at her son, who was yawning, she noticed that his color was still pink and he was dressed in some of his new clothes.

  "Poor little lad. He's so quiet."

  Erina sat on the bed and grasped Mrs. Abernathy's hand, pulling her down beside her. "Do you believe in miracles?" Erina asked, looking intently at the older woman.

  "Why, I suppose. The church says that miracles occur."

  "Yes, they do. Mrs. Abernathy, I need to show you something."

  "What--"

  "Just look." Erina lay Colin on the bed and unzipped his "romper," as she'd learned to call the one piece garment.

  "Where did you get those strange clothes? I've never seen the like!"

  Erina didn't answer, just peeled apart the fabric over Colin's chest.

  "Good Lord!" Mrs. Abernathy exclaimed. "What has happened to your baby?"

  "He's been cured. Oh, Mrs. Abernathy, I know this is hard for you to believe, but I went to the church tonight to pray for a miracle to save Colin's life. He was so blue, havin' such a hard time with his poor little heart. I prayed to the Blessed Virgin to save my son and she . . ."

  "She what? Tell me!"

  "She sent me a hundred years into the future, into the hands of a good,
kind man who took Colin to the hospital. And they operated on his heart."

  The older woman reached out and touched the pink scar. "Surgery on his heart? But how?"

  Erina shrugged. "I don't know the exact way they do it. All I know is that his heart is fixed. This morning--" She had to stop; she couldn't talk past the lump in her throat. "I'm sorry. I'm just so surprised to be back here. I thought we'd live our lives in 1996, with . . . with Grant."

  "He's the man who helped Colin?"

  "Yes. He's the man . . . the man I love." Erina collapsed against Mrs. Abernathy's shoulder, letting the older woman hold her like she'd held Colin so many times. "What am I going to do?"

  "Oh, my poor lamb, I don't know. I just don't know."

  #

  Grant dragged himself back to his condo. He had no idea how he got there or if he'd run over a score of pedestrians on is way. All he knew was that Erina and Colin were gone to a place where even he, with all his money and contacts, couldn't find them.

  Had they gone back safely? Did Colin survive without post-surgical check-ups and modern medicine? Had Erina eventually married someone else who could be a good husband to her and a father to Colin? There were no records before the hurricane, so he couldn't know if they'd even gone back to her time--October, 1896.

  He opened the doors of the balcony and went outside, leaning against the rail and watching the waves come in from the gulf. How long ago had they kissed on this very spot, letting their desire run free for a few brief moments? A week? So much had happened since then. His life had been changed forever by Erina and Colin, but it was too late. Too late.

  He sank against the sliding glass doors, letting himself cry for the second time since he was a child. Even when his father died, he hadn't cried. Now he couldn't stop. He sobbed like a baby as the steady southerly wind dried the tears on his cheeks.

  He wasn't sure how long he sat out there, but eventually he realized that the wind had changed. Cooler now, a hint of rain drifted on the breeze. Perhaps another cold front, like the one that come through the weekend Erina arrived, he thought with a shaft of pain. Oh, Erina, what has happened to you? Where are you, love?

  He pushed himself up from the concrete floor, feeling a hundred years old at least as he limped inside the condo. Everywhere he looked, he could see her. Standing in the kitchen, trying to learn how to make hot tea. Walking across the living room carrying Colin. Emerging from his bedroom doorway swallowed up in his bathrobe, a startled look on her face.

  Would he really never see her again? He simply couldn't imagine not finding her, somehow, somewhere, even though he believed that she'd gone back to her own time. He believed her, now, when it was too late.

  But was it too late to find out if she'd lived past the hurricane? Since she knew it was coming, perhaps she would leave the island for safer ground. She wouldn't risk Colin's life. She'd resettle somewhere else. There should be a record of her sometime after 1900. He just needed to know where.

  But that won't bring her back, a voice inside his head whispered. No, but if he at least knew she was safe . . . And what if she didn't show up anywhere? How could he interpret those results? That she hadn't gone back in time? That she hadn't survived?

  He picked up the phone with shaking hands and called the private investigator Brian had used before. The man had Erina's fingerprints, her name. He could search for her in the computer databases. If she'd lived in the past, surely there was a record.

  Not if she married someone else. The house, their possessions would be in the man's name. But Erina was only twenty years old in 1896, so she should have lived until the 1950's or 1960's, at least. But she'd still be dead today. What about Colin? He'd been born in 1896, so he could have lived until the 1970's, '80's, or even more. He would have been one hundred this past August--not totally inconceivable.

  Grant fought back a wave of panic as the investigator answered the phone.

  Within minutes he told the man to search for Erina O'Shea and Erina Kirby, and Colin Patrick Kirby, not in the present, but in the past. Back to 1900, Grant told the surprised man. Find some record of her and her child. He knew to the investigator he sounded crazy--as crazy as Erina had sounded to him at first. He'd assumed she'd created a fantasy all through their relationship, even telling her as much. How had she endured his skepticism?

  When he hung up the phone, he paced the floor. He'd told the man to drop everything else on his calendar. Charge anything he wanted. Grant had to know immediately. He had to find Erina, to tell her that he was wrong, that he was sorry. To ask her forgiveness for ever doubting her.

  Exhausted, he dropped down on the couch, resting his elbows on his knees and cradling his head. "Oh, God, I've got to know."

  Later, when the phone didn't ring, he walked into her bedroom and curled up on her bed. A beautiful, long, black hair rested on her pillow. Grant held it, curled it around his ring finger, and cried again for the loss. When all his tears were gone, he lay dry-eyed through the night, breathing in her scent and trying to reach out to her somehow, across the years, and tell her how much he loved her.

  The next morning he received a call from the investigator: No record existed anywhere in the U.S. or in Ireland of an Erina O'Shea or an Erina Kirby from 1900 on. Nor was there anything on a Colin Patrick Kirby, born in 1896. Grant hung up the phone realizing that he might never know what had happened to them.

  He made a decision then. All the efforts he could expend wouldn't bring Erina back. Only one thing would. He had to find a way to cause another miracle. She'd disappeared at Kirby House. He'd go back there, he'd pray, he'd petition her God for intervention. She was his wife; he thought of Colin as his son. Didn't the church consider matrimony a holy state? Why would they be separated since they'd been married by a priest?

  He shaved and showered, threw on fresh clothes, and drove to Kirby House. It was still closed, so he sat in the car and waited until ten o'clock when the tour guides arrived. He waited and remembered how happy she'd been just yesterday with Colin's check-up, with marriage, with life in general. She'd giggled and laughed, making him smile more than he had in ages.

  She'd been everything he could have imagined and more on their wedding night. For all practical purposes, she was a virgin, but she'd responded to him with an honest passion that had turned into a realization of her own desire by night's end. If they had a hundred years together, he'd never learn everything about her. Yet he was more than willing to try.

  He rubbed his scratchy eyes. The doors to Kirby House opened and he jumped out of the Jeep, running up the steps two at a time.

  "I'm Grant Kirby," he told the startled tour guide. "I was here yesterday with my wife and baby. A different lady was here. Older, with gray hair."

  "Yes, we alternate days. What can I do for you?"

  "Upstairs in one of the bedrooms, something happened. Something . . . bizarre." He ran a hand through his hair. "I've got to get back up there and find a way to get them back."

  "Your wife and child are missing?"

  "Yes. Not in the usual sense. One minute we were standing there together and the next, she was gone. Gone, just like that," he said, snapping his fingers. "I've got to find her."

  The guide looked at him as though he were mentally deficient. "Mr. Kirby, your wife is not here," she explained patiently. "I've just opened up the house and no one was here."

  "I know they're not here now," he said. "They were here yesterday. They vanished. I've got to go up there. I've got to find a way to get them back."

  "Where did they go?"

  "Back. Back to the past." He didn't wait for the tour guide to ask him any more questions. He simply bounded up the stairs and down the hall, looking for the right bedroom.

  There it was. Kathleen Kirby's bedroom, with Erina's quilt on top of the bed. All the glorious colors, all the tiny stitches, all the work she'd put into piecing it together. A labor of love, that's what the quilt was. Could he find her through it?

  He knelt on
the floor beside the bed and placed his hand over the embroidered heart. "Erina, come back to me please. Come back. I love you. I need you and Colin."

  He stayed on the floor, trying to talk to Erina, thinking about everything she'd said and done while she was with him. He stayed beside the bed until the tour guide became concerned and asked him to leave, and even longer, until she called the police to talk to him.

  As the afternoon wore on, they left him alone. Everyone thought he was crazy, but he was still a Kirby and a multi-millionaire. So they closed the door to the room and left him alone to talk to Erina, plead with her to come back. He became angry at fate, at whatever force guided their lives. When nothing happened, he cursed God for taking her away.

  There was no response, but Erina's words kept echoing in his head. If only you could believe. Had she meant in her, or in something else altogether? And if she meant in God, in the power of miracles, what would his answer be?

  #

  Erina knew she shouldn't feel so betrayed, but she couldn't help the desolation that constantly influenced her thoughts. How could Mary be so wonderful as to grant a miracle to save Colin, only to separate a husband and wife joined by the church?

  But Grant lied to the priest, a little voice reminded her. You should have told the father the truth and asked for his mercy. You should have been honest in your intentions, but you had more belief in Grant than you did in your faith.

  "Stop it!" she cried, putting her hands over her ears. She didn't want to hear the truth, now that it was too late. Now that it just tormented her further.

  And she was also tormented by imagining what Grant thought, what he'd experienced when she vanished before his eyes. Did he drive back to Houston or stay in Galveston? Was he angry? Sad? Had he cried for her?

  She needed a project to keep her mind off Grant and everything they'd lost in one blinding flash of light, so when she wasn't caring for Colin, she worked on her quilt, tears in her eyes most of the time. Mrs. Abernathy came up to check on her several times, bringing tea and a meat pie at lunch, tea and scones later in the day. By the time the sun began to set, the quilt was finished and Erina felt emotionally and physically exhausted.