By the time she got to Briar Creek it was dark and she was exhausted.
Papa greeted her at the door with a cup of hot chocolate.
Her tension began to fall away in layers.
She set down her suitcase, stroked Leo as he rubbed against her leg then accepted the cup from Papa. "How did you know exactly when to make this so it would be hot when I got here?"
"Your mother told me."
Of course.
She sat down on the sofa to sip her chocolate. Leo curled in her lap, purred loudly and shoved his head under her hand, demanding to be petted.
Another layer of tension melted away.
"There's something so soothing about being here, Papa. When I came in, I was completely frazzled, and now, suddenly, I'm at least half relaxed."
"This old house is permeated with a lot of love, Katie-girl. That's always soothing to the soul."
"That lilac scent helps, too. I'm going to have to do some research into all this aroma therapy. Obviously there's something to it. Where do you get that room deodorizer?"
"I don't have any room deodorizer. Lilac has always been your mother's favorite scent. After a while, those things you love just start to become a part of you. It's nice, isn't it?"
Kate smiled. There was no point in arguing with him or trying to convince him that Mama's ghost wasn't drifting through the room, trailing the scent of lilacs.
By the time Kate went up to bed, she could barely keep her eyes open.
***
Jerome stood at the base of the stairs and watched Katie go up, then listened for the sound of her bedroom door closing.
"Well, my love, this could be it," Emma said. "I think I may be able to get through to her tonight."
Jerome wrapped an arm around his wife's waist. "I hope so. I sure hate to see our baby hurting." He hated the thought of his wife leaving, too, but that was the natural order of things. He'd already had her far longer than he'd ever dared hope.
"She's ready to give in. And how could she resist with what Luke's been doing this week? I've always liked that boy, but I never realized he was so clever. All of those things were his own idea. I had no hand in that, except getting Francine and Jeff to talk to him and putting in a few computer blocks."
Jerome nodded. "Luke is clever, and he knows our Katie so well. Just think how clever our grandchildren will be."
"That's one of the points she and I still have to talk about."
"I'll be waiting for you in our room." He leaned down and pecked Emma's tingly lips. "You give new meaning to the term sizzling kisses," he teased.
"Oh, Jerome!" She blushed and smiled.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kate had just dozed off when she heard her name being called.
"Katie-girl."
Papa was the only one who called her that, but it didn't sound like Papa's voice.
She rolled over and there, in the moonlight that filtered through the branches of the cottonwood tree outside her window, she saw Mama sitting on her bed stroking Leo.
Well, not exactly Mama, like in a flesh-and-blood person, but sort of a transparent Mama...and she was glowing a little. Most people didn't glow.
Kate sat bolt upright, her heart pounding, then reminded herself she was asleep and dreaming. It was only natural that she should be dreaming about Mama after Papa had been talking about her so much. No big deal.
"We haven't been able to talk like this in years," Mama said. "I've missed that."
"Me, too." As Kate spoke the words, she realized they were true even though they made no sense. "We used to talk like this when I was little, didn't we?"
Good grief! What was she saying?
"Dream like this, I mean."
That wasn't a whole lot better.
Mama smiled and ran her hand over Leo's back while he did his invisible hand routine just as she'd done in the other dream Kate had had of her. "We did talk like this," Mama said. "I'd come in to see you almost every night, sometimes in your dreams and sometimes like now."
"This is a dream."
"If you need it to be."
"Why'd you stop? Why'd you leave me?" The questions came out before Kate could stop them. She frowned at her own absurdity. "Why am I asking these questions when it's my dream?"
"After Luke left, you stopped believing. I was able to come back to you and your father because I love you both so much and because you both love me. But that means you can only see and hear me with your heart. I couldn't reach you until you opened that door again, until you were able to let Luke past the barrier you put up."
"This dream isn't going the way I want it to. I'm going back to sleep now."
She laid her head on the pillow and resolutely closed her eyes. Leo walked over her stomach and rubbed his cheek against hers. Damn, he felt real!
"You can't go back to sleep now. You have to get up and get dressed. Luke's going to be over here in a few minutes, and you need to go down and tell him you'll marry him."
Kate sat up again. She'd never before had such a bossy dream!
"Luke's going to be over here in the middle of the night? Right."
"He is. I sort of suggested it to him."
"Right." She hugged Leo to her. It was normal to dream about her cat, she supposed. That part was okay.
"It's true," Mama said. "I'm not connected to Luke the way I am to you and Papa so he can't see me, but he loves you both so much, I've been able to make suggestions to him as well as to Francine and Jeff. The hearts of those two are very open to love." She smiled fondly. "I'm sure George approves of their marriage."
Kate pushed her hair back from her face as if that would somehow allow her to see more clearly. It didn't. Mama was still there. She was still dreaming.
"This is absolutely the last time I drink Papa's hot chocolate before I go to bed. If I didn't know better, I'd think he drugged it."
"Katie, you know in your heart that this isn't a dream. If you'll only look deep within, you'll remember how we used to talk. I need for you to remember and to realize that I never left you, and I never will, not even when I have to go on. When people love each other, they're never separated, not by miles or years or even death."
Kate closed her eyes, rubbed a hand over them, looked away and then back.
Mama was still there.
And with a shock, she did remember how she'd accepted this sort of thing as completely natural when she was a little girl. Then when Luke had left, her mother had, too, and the pain had been unendurable.
Her mother laid a transparent, faintly glowing, tingly hand on hers, and Kate's heart swelled with the amount of love that touch transferred, the amount of love that had brought her mother back for her.
"You have the love that grows between a man and a woman, Katie, if you'll just accept it," Mama said. "Luke is your soul-mate, just as your father is mine. You'll be as happy as we are. But I also want you to know the love between a mother and child, all the wonder of holding your baby in your arms. You're frightened of that because you don't want your children to experience the pain you went through when you lost me...twice...once in the car wreck and again when Luke left and you closed your heart so I couldn't reach you. But now you know there's nothing to fear. Even when you're all settled and I can go on, you'll have my love in your heart."
The last barrier fell. "Mama?" Kate asked in wonder. She realized tears were streaming down her face, though she didn't think she was crying.
"Yes, Katie-girl. I'm here. I always have been and I always will be even when you're not able to see me." She stood and planted a tingly kiss on Kate's forehead. "Get up and get dressed, sweetheart. Your best friend should be here any minute."
Mama left. She didn't disappear in a puff of smoke or a flash of light. She walked out in a fairly conventional manner...except the door was only open a few inches, just enough for Leo to come in.
Kate sat blinking in the moonlight. She was awake. But had she been awake a few minutes ago?
She touched h
er face and felt the dampness of her tears. Her heart was still warm with the love she'd felt in her dream.
Or her actual conversation with her mother.
Leo purred and demanded she pet him.
The way Mama had been petting him.
The way Mama had been petting him all those times Kate had laughed about his invisible hand routine?
She did remember now that her mother had visited her often in her dreams when she was a child unable to tell the difference between dreams and reality.
And even beyond that time.
Up until Luke had gone away, until she'd closed her heart to love.
Something thudded against the side of the house.
Was someone outside?
A flicker of fear shot through her, but this was Briar Creek. No one would break and enter Sheriff's house.
She got out of bed and went to the window.
A ladder sat against the house, and Luke was climbing that ladder.
"What are you doing?" she demanded. "Are you nuts?"
He looked up, smiled and sighed. "I think I must be. Katie, I love you a lot, but this is it. After you climb down from your window and we sneak out, we're through reliving the past. Do you have any idea how many boxes I had to go through to find my football jacket and class ring?"
Kate laughed. She couldn't help it. She'd just been visited by her mother's ghost who'd left her feeling all warm and mushy inside, and now she discovered the deputy sheriff climbing up a ladder to her window. "What are you doing here in the middle of the night?"
"It's not the middle of the night. It's ten-thirty. But I have no idea what I'm doing here. I was watching the news when I had a sudden urge to come by and see if you'd arrived yet, just check to see if your car was here. Then when I saw this ladder lying beside the house, I thought, what the heck? Who's going to arrest me? So, are you ready to sneak out?"
It was completely absurd and ridiculous...but Kate wanted to do it. "We can't do that."
"Why not?"
"There's a screen on the window."
Luke sighed again. "Okay, I'll go get a hammer."
"I suppose you could do that, or I could I just come out the front door."
"I'd like that. I'd really like that. I feel really stupid right now."
"You don't look stupid."
"I don't?"
Kate drew in a deep breath. This was it, time to make a choice. She could choose to run away again. Not just to Dallas, but inside herself, lock her heart behind strong barricades and keep out the pain. But she'd also keep out the love and all the happiness that came with that love.
Or she could choose to open up...to Mama and Luke and even the possibility of children.
"No, you don't look stupid. You look wonderful. You look like the future, so let's stop with all this bringing back the past and talk about that instead. I'll meet you at the front door in five minutes."
Kate hurriedly yanked off her oversized T-shirt and jerked on the halter-top summer dress she'd driven down in. She'd chosen it for comfort, not style or beauty, but it would have to do for right now. Anyway, Luke had loved her when she was a scrawny kid with scabs on her knees and dirt on her face.
From her suitcase, she extracted the diamond ring then ran downstairs. Her bare feet made almost no sound on the steps, but several of them creaked from her weight. However, there was little likelihood that Papa was asleep with all the visitors...ghostly and otherwise.
She hesitated at the foot of the stairs for a moment and looked back toward her room.
Had she really been talking to Mama's ghost or had it all been a dream?
One thing she knew for certain, the love was real.
She opened the door to find Luke sitting in the porch swing.
She smiled. "Hi."
He smiled. "Hi."
She offered him the box, and he frowned. "I see. Does this mean your answer is no?"
She sat beside him and felt momentarily shy. But there was no need for that. She'd known Luke all her life. He was her best friend. "Of course not. It just means I want you to ask me in the present and in person."
He grinned. "Do I have to get down on one knee? I got this football injury in high school, and I've already stressed it tonight climbing a ladder after a woman who wouldn't climb down with me and—"
"Okay, you can forget the knee business!"
He opened the box and took out the ring. "Katie Fallon, I've loved you since—"
"And I'd appreciate it if you'd forget the matching diaper business, too."
"I was going to say, I've loved you since the first time I can remember."
"You were not. You can't lie to me, Luke Rodgers. I know you too well."
His dark eyes shone though they were on the porch, hidden away from the moon and the stars. "Yes, you do. And you know how much I love you."
A lump rose in her throat and she became as serious as he. "I do know," she whispered. "And I love you the same, with all my heart."
"Katie, if you'll marry me, I swear I'll never leave you again."
"I know that, too. And I will marry you if you promise we won't have to make love on that hard cave floor ever again."
She held out her hand, and he slipped the ring on her finger then grinned and wrapped his arms around her. "You didn't seem to mind. But I'm sure we can find plenty of other places."
He lowered his lips to hers and she gave herself up to a kiss that tasted of the past and the present and held a world full of wonderful dreams of the future.
When he finally, reluctantly, drew away, his eyes were heavy-lidded with desire and both of them were breathing hard. "How about if we set the date real soon?" he asked, his voice husky.
"Good idea. We can do that. I already have a dress in the attic." She lifted her hand to admire the ring, the promise of her life with Luke. "It fits perfectly. How did you know my ring size?"
Luke shrugged. "I'm not sure how I knew. I just did."
And suddenly Kate knew. Mama had said he'd been open to her suggestions.
She hadn't been dreaming.
From Papa's window, the strains of Anniversary Waltz drifted down.
Papa hadn't been sleeping.
She took Luke's hand. "Dance with me."
They moved out into the yard, and Luke pulled her into his arms.
"We'll have better dance floors in the future, too," he promised with a wink.
"No, we won't. It couldn't get any better than this."
As she danced with Luke in the front yard where once they'd played, she looked up to Papa's window and saw him dancing with Mama.
Epilogue
Jerome stood on the porch and waved as Katie and Luke drove away in Luke's big old convertible, off to Padre Island for their honeymoon. The happy couple waved back, and Katie blew him a kiss.
He turned, went into the house and climbed the stairs to his bedroom. From the window, he and Emma watched Katie and Luke round the corner.
"Our Katie looked so beautiful in your wedding dress. She's the prettiest bride I've seen since you."
Mama smiled and leaned her head on his shoulder. "She was beautiful. And Luke was almost as handsome as you."
"You were right, Emma. She and Luke just needed a gentle nudge in the right direction."
Emma nodded. "It makes me so happy to see her happy again."
Jerome put one arm around his wife and his other hand on the window sill, bracing himself. "She is happy. I guess we finally got her raised. I couldn't have done it without you. Now I reckon you'll be going on." He forced himself to smile a wobbly smile. "I know you have to, and I'm not complaining. I've had all these extra years with you, a chance most people never get. But I'm sure gonna miss you."
He looked out the window and swallowed hard, determined not to let her see his sadness.
Emma cuddled closer. "I've been here an awfully long time now. I don't think a few more years will make much difference on a cosmic level. I'd kind of like to stick around to see my grandchi
ldren, especially that one that's about the size of a lady bug right now. And then maybe I'll wait around a little longer until you're ready to come with me."
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