“I feel as if I love him.” I said it simply, with no flourishes or emotion.
“Love him? Or loved him?”
“Love him. Deeply and unconditionally. But I can’t recollect any lifetime, not a single memory from what I can recollect, in which we were together.”
Mother sat stock-still, not looking at me, having gone from pursing her lips to gnawing on her lower lip.
“I know that sounds ridiculous. I know you probably think I’m succumbing to some silly romantic notion.”
“Or to a sexual entrapment spell.”
“It doesn’t feel like that. I’m completely capable of refusing or ignoring him if he acts untrustworthy or dangerous. And I wouldn’t accept him as a spiritual guide or contact anyway. Not unless I solved the question of who he is and why he’s here, and he proved worthy of my attention.”
Mother stood up abruptly.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “I thought I heard Daniel crying. He’s about due to wake up from his nap, isn’t he?”
I glanced at the kitchen clock. “Probably. He’s been asleep for two hours now.” She was studying me somberly. “Funny. I didn’t hear anything.”
Not answering, she moved through the dining room and living room, then stood at the base of the staircase, looking up.
“He will wake up if we talk here,” I said.
She nodded and motioned us back to the kitchen. “Must have imagined it.” She dumped our coffee cups into the sink and began selecting food from the fridge to prepare for dinner.
“At any rate,” I told her, “my attraction to this spirit, whatever’s causing it, is a moot point. He’s apparently gone. I just may be a silly romantic goose, simply because he was right about Richard and acted so protectively toward me. It’s obvious I never knew him before, or I’d have remembered him, pushy behavior and all. All I can come up with is the possibility that we never really met, but he somehow knew of me, and built it into some intense and unrequited fantasy about me.”
Mother stopped chopping the lettuce and leaned, wearily, I thought, on the counter. “We’ve completely overlooked something else he said, which I just remembered. Leigh Ann, he said you had been kept hidden from him.”
“That may just be his interpretation, if he only knew about me, but couldn’t meet me, simply an expression of his frustration.” Mother’s quick glance clearly didn’t buy that. “I know, I know. Yes, I’m making up my own interpretation. But keeping me hidden from him isn’t the same as giving me the world’s longest case of amnesia!”
“What makes you think you’ve remembered all your past lives? Amnesia is exactly what the higher planes instill in most people to keep them centered on their current lifetime. Do you think we’re exempt from such need, simply because our psychic talents enhance our ability to see beyond the mundane this go-around?”
She shook her head briskly. “I’ve told you a thousand times, but you don’t listen. Psychic ability and knowledge is a gift, not a privilege, and the gift does not come with a lifetime guaranty, no pun intended, my dear daughter. The talent won’t work, the knowledge won’t come, if somehow your using it or knowing it would prove harmful to you or others, no matter how innocent or beneficial your intentions are . . . or if you were unscrupulous, God forbid, no matter how deserving the targets of your evil intentions might be. Our free will is tempered under the ever-watchful eye of the High Council and their involvement tempered by the tapestry of our souls, all woven together throughout time. The Creator’s game plan, ongoing and immortal.
“But our mortal lives are in themselves important, together making up the sum total of our learning experience in this plane of existence and the value we’ve achieved and can take with us to use when we graduate from it and go permanently beyond.”
Her lecturing had riled me, as it had through my childhood and teenage years. Neither Ginnie nor Fred got these lectures, but, of course, they hadn’t inherited Mother’s psychic abilities. And when I got riled, I generally took Ginnie’s advice. Ginnie had as little tolerance for lectures as she did for psychic subjects. She ignored both, being ultra-independent and set on making her own decisions and choices. “I appreciate your telling me all this, Mom, and I know about the mysteries. No one knows everything. But I can’t believe they would have blanked my memory of him if he were that important to my spiritual development. Some memory would have surfaced, as deeply as I’ve probed.”
“It did. Your love for him. The question is: is that slight opening something deliberately left unhidden, or is it a glitch in the system designed to protect you? And more importantly, is his so-called returning to you—giving you the benefit of doubt with your unrequited love theory—beneficial or detrimental? Are we dealing with good or evil here?”
I bristled at the thought of Bael’s being evil. He had already proven himself beneficial and protective, not destructive. “I think the best thing to do is take it slow and if he returns, reinforce our auric protection and examine his behavior very carefully. I also feel I should get on with my real life, Mom. I’m separated from my husband, probably heading for divorce, and have no source of income. What I need to concentrate on is getting daycare and a job, not this Bael. There’s really no time to waste on him.”
“Is that how you really feel?” She said it quietly, as if she would accept whatever answer I gave and work through it with me.
“It’s not how I feel. It’s what I have to do. I have no time for obsessions in my Earthly life, not if I’m to get on with it.”
“Then you won’t become obsessed. Intent is half the battle.”
I nodded, glad she believed in me, at least on that point. “I’m going to get Daniel up. He’s been asleep for nearly three hours now. If he sleeps anymore, he’ll be up half the night.”
“Mmn. Go ahead. I’d better get this dinner started. And Leigh Ann— ” I turned back to her. “—don’t be afraid to tell me anything, if you think I can help.”
“I’m not afraid, Mom.”
“I know you aren’t. I guess ‘embarrassed’ was the word I meant.”
A small smile crept onto the corners of my lips, and I guess I blushed. Mom was never shy or subtle. I didn’t answer—my reddening was answer enough—and headed upstairs to wake Daniel.
As I walked down the hall to the old bedroom, which Ginnie and I both shared growing up and now shared with Daniel, Mom’s earlier disquiet resurfaced in my mind. I opened the door and walked over to the crib which Dad had brought back from Queens.
Daniel wasn’t in it. Horror constricted my throat, but I forced myself to stay calm, my eyes scanning the floor around the crib— nothing—and then moved around the crib and spotted Daniel asleep on my bed a few feet away. The bed pillows had been removed and flung on the floor between the bed and the closet; the covers had been pulled down, and only the top sheet covered my son to his waist.
No one had been in the house that afternoon except my mother and me.
I checked Daniel’s breathing; it seemed rhythmic and normal. Then I flew down the stairs and into the kitchen. “Mom. I need you upstairs. Right now.”
I spent no further time in explanation, tearing back up the stairs and into the bedroom where Daniel still slept snugly on the bed. Mother had followed me in. I gestured toward the baby and whispered, “I didn’t move him.”
We both knew Fred and Ginnie were at school, and Dad was at work. There was no way a nine-week-old infant could have gone from the crib