A Breath of Fresh Air (excerpt)
He felt as if an eternity had passed since he had
allowed himself any reminder of Karen, locking away her things in a
superstitious attempt to banish her memory.
Now he hesitated in the doorway like a nervous bridegroom.
The past caressed him as if the intervening five years had been nothing
but a long, drawn-out nightmare from which he was finally awakening.
Steeling himself, he took a wary step over the tower threshold.
Whispers of her voice echoed in the corners of the
cluttered room. Dust covered her
paintings and playthings in a silken shroud trimmed by the delicate tracery of
spider lace. The warmth of her
smile glimmered in the sunbeams peeking through the grime dulling the windows.
The light sparkled on floating dust motes as if some careless pixie had
dropped a handful of diamonds. The
dainty tinkle of crystal joined the siren whisper of the room as the chandelier
above his head stirred in the slight breeze created by the open doorway.
He felt as if Life had stepped into the room just
ahead of him, standing just beyond his range of sight, playing a whimsical game
of hide-and-seek….
“Jonathan…” whispered the silence, startling
him out of his reverie.
He glanced wildly around the room—until the murky
depths of the mirror atop her antique dressing table trapped and held his
darting gaze. Karen had always
joked about it being her ‘doorway to beauty.’
In those final painful weeks, the glass had been carefully draped to
avoid a chance reflection…. But
now—
It was the merest whisper of sound.
“Jonathan…I have missed you, beloved….”
He stared into the heart of the dingy glass.
He could see her clearly, standing in the doorway behind him, just inside
the confines of the room—almost close enough to touch….
She was as radiantly vibrant as she had been before
that terrible final illness. The
sunbeams caught in the soft net of her golden curls, surrounding her in a nimbus
of light…the halo of an angel.
His knees buckled, and he caught himself against the
edge of the dressing table, the familiar prick of unwanted tears gathering in
the corners of his eyes. He began
to turn.
The apparition raised a slim, pale hand to stop him. “No!” she cried, the sound of tinkling raindrops on
finest crystal. “Please…don’t
turn away from me, darling. I’m
here…in the mirror.”
He swiped away the film of dirt with the sleeve of
his tweed jacket, staring hungrily at her beauty, as a parched man at an oasis
will drink. “My God, Karen…what
the hell….” A chill ran down
his spine at the unfortunate turn of phrase, and he shivered.
“What are you doing here…there?
Am I losing my mind?”
She glided forward behind the glass, coming closer
and closer until he was sure that he would soon feel her slender arms encircling
his waist, her cheek pressed against his shoulder.
Instead, her palms flattened against his from the other side of the
mirror. Only a quarter inch of
clear glass separated them now, instead of five years of aching loss.