Never Really Alone

Chapter Twelve

The repairs to the house were estimated to take about two weeks, so we were all staying at Aggie's until they were completed.  As soon as she'd heard about the fire she had literally jumped in and taken over.  Before Stephen or I could even think about it she had her truck in our driveway and was loading the crib and assorted baby paraphernalia into it, telling us to "Hurry up and get your things."  She was Godmother to both of the girls and was simply fulfilling her obligations, no more, no less.  So to Aggie's we all went.  But I felt, in all fairness I had to warn her about Miranda Jean.

At my urging, Stephen took Catherine and Julia to his father's house for the day, so I could take my time telling Aggie my suspicions about Miranda Jean.  But as usual, she beat me to the punch.  "What's going on Sarah?  And don't you dare tell me 'nothing' because I know something is bearing on you.  You're starting to look the way you did near the end of your pregnancy when you weren't sleeping.  Out with it girl."

"I don't know where to start, Aggie.  There is just so much filling up my heart and my head right now.  But, the thing is, I'm really afraid to put it into words, because it seems as if the more I talk about it the more real it will become."  I could feel the tears well up in my eyes again, like they had so many times in the past twenty-four hours.

Aggie smiled at me and just like always, she made me feel better.    Just looking at her, you understood that love was something tangible, something that you could touch and hold and carry with you.  "Honey, words alone don't make something real or not, whether you whisper them or shout them so loud the angels can hear them.  Sometimes just saying what you fear out loud, you can throw it away from yourself, so that you can deal with whatever it is all the easier, if you know what I mean."

I didn't know what she meant and I said so.  "No, I don't."

"Well, sitting here saying nothing isn't going to help anyone, is it?"

"No.  You're right.  Aggie something has happened to Miranda Jean, something bad.  She's trying to hurt us.  Me and the twins.  At first it was just little thing, little tricks, mischief.  But now, well now it's different.  I know it sounds crazy, but I'm sure it was her that broke the crystal bear that cut my foot.  There's no other explanation.  And, well uh, I think...oh God.  Aggie, she started the fire.  I know it sounds insane, I know it does.  And I don't want to admit it, but it's true.  Stephen and I have talked about it and he agrees with me.  I don't know why she's doing it, except that I think she's very angry with me.  But I don't know how to make her stop."  I could feel the tears falling again and my throat began to close up.  "I'm so afraid for Catherine and Julia."  I felt my body tremble from a place deep inside of me and it felt as if it would never stop.

Aggie took a hold of my hand and held it very tightly, but said nothing for three or four minutes.  We sat quietly in the afternoon warmth watching the clouds as they cluttered the azure sky with their wispy fingers reaching heavenward.  "I think I understand Sarah.  Unfortunately everything you've said makes perfect sense, from a child's point of view.  But will you answer one question for me?"

"If I can.  What is it?"

"Near the end of your pregnancy, when you stopped sleeping, what was going on?  Did it have something to do with Miranda Jean?"

At that point I figured Miranda Jean already saw me as the enemy, so I told Aggie all about the nightmares.

She listened carefully and then said, "So, in the dreams she switched places with you, and now you think she's really trying to kill you?"

"And the girls."

"No, Sarah, I think the girls are just incidental.  It's you that she wants."

I didn't understand.  "What do you mean, of course the girls are important.  They were there for everything, they were there for the fire."

"I know," she said.  "But it's always been you.  You stepped on the bear.  The other things were just mischief, like you said.  The serious things are about you.  She's haunting you.  She was haunting you in the dreams and she's haunting you now."

"No!  She's just a child, Aggie.  She's not evil.  Haunting?  She can't be haunting me, that's ridiculous.  No!  That's not it.  That can't be it."

Aggie reached up and held my face in her hands and looked straight into my eyes.  "Is it evil to try and burn down your house with your children asleep inside of it?  Would that be the action of 'just a child'?  Tell me Sarah.  Think carefully before you answer."

The trembling inside of me grew stronger and a fear I had never known gripped me and held my mind as if in a hunter's snare.  "I can't believe it. Why would she be haunting me?  What do I do now?  How can I stop her?"

"It's beyond us to know how this happened, how to know what turned her.  But something must be done.  You have to find a way to reach her, some way to stop her, before it's too late."

I began to feel numb, as if I had looked back at the city of sin and been turned to salt.  The trembling had stopped, but now I felt nothing, I was empty.  "I think it's too late Aggie.  She's more than I know how to deal with, she's smarter than I am."

Suddenly I felt Aggie's hands on my shoulders shaking me.  "Wake up!  She's a child and you're a grown woman with a husband and children to protect.  Don't you dare tell me she's won before you even try.  Don't you even dare, Sarah Jane Kilpatrick, for I will surely wear you out!  I will not lose you, I will not."

And somewhere on some level I heard her, and somewhere inside of me a tiny kernel of the Sarah Jane I once was stood and defended herself.

That evening, leaving Stephen and the girls in Aggie's good care, I went back to our house on Thayer Street hoping to somehow get Miranda Jean to come back to me.  For all I knew, maybe she had been there the whole time and it had been me who'd been unable to see her.  After all, it had happened before.  Perhaps without the distraction of my family, it would be possible.

The contractors had barely begun work on the kitchen and the odor of the smoke and wet wood permeated the whole house.  But since the kitchen seemed to be the last place she had been, I thought that was the best place to try and find her.  I figured that I had two things in my favor.  First of all I had come alone, no Stephen  and no children.  It would just be me and Miranda Jean, no one else to pull my attention away from her.  Secondly I was in the place where the fire started.  I hadn't avoided it or been afraid to be there.  I thought this might show her that I held no hard or mean feelings toward her.  At least I hoped that was what she thought.

There was so much about this that wasn't clear.  There were a lot of things since Miranda Jean died that I didn't understand, things that even she didn't understand.  Like, where did she go when I couldn't see her?  And why couldn't I see her sometimes, even when I wanted to?  And why hadn't she moved on to wherever it was she was supposed to go?  Was it because of me, was I holding her back?  And how did she know I was pregnant before I did?  Could she read my thoughts?  How did she get inside my dreams? I didn't have the answer to anything.  Did she?  I had no idea what I was even up against.

Maybe Aggie was wrong, maybe she wasn't really haunting me at all.  Maybe it was all just a horrid mistake.  But tonight was about finding the answers once and for all.  And like the dying man who can't decide whether or not he wants to know the exact day he will die; I would stay and call for Miranda Jean, knowing that finding her might bring me answers I never wanted.

I stood in the center of the kitchen, pieces of burned cabinets on the floor around me and stilled my mind.  After a moment I began to call for her quietly, but with a need so strong as to feel a pull on my soul.  Her name over and over became a whispered prayer, sent out to the heavens and beyond, with a pleading just tinged with fear.  I had no sense of time, and soon not even of place, for the room became darker and even the edges blurred and I lost the sense of the room.

In time I felt my throat become dry and even the effort of a whisper became more than my voice could manage, yet still I called for her.  My body seemed to be no longer my own for I had no sense of it, felt no part of it, neither arms nor legs, head nor torso.  Still from somewhere I called out to her, for I heard her name.  Low and quiet for the longest time, and then finally a whispered scream, "Miranda Jean."  Then spent, there was nothing left and I fell to my knees, my tears mixing with the stale and dirty water on the floor.  I heard no answer, no sound, no movement.

I have no sense of how long I laid on the floor, or if I was conscious or not.  I only know that as I laid there I felt the slightest touch on my shoulder, like a warm breath or the brush of a fairy's wing.  I opened my eyes and she was there.  I pulled myself into a sitting position and she stood directly in front of me, looking exactly as she always looked.  A sweet, seven-year old baby girl, blond braids swinging, dressed in her green and yellow sun-suit, golden skin, kissed by the sun.  Her smile was unchanged, as if nothing bad had ever happened, as if she had never gone away, as if I had just seen her two minutes ago.

I opened my arms to her and she came to me as if I were her mother and she was my child, and I held her closer than a rose clings to its stem and I cried.  I cried for the loss of my twin sister.  I cried as a seven-year old grieves and I cried as an adult who loses a child.  I cried tears that had been inside of me all those years when I had been made to deny her and I cried tears for all those years that I had been denied.  And I cried for all of those things that we would never share because I grew up and she never would.  And I cried for her and I cried for me.

"Sarah Jane, I'm sorry for what I did.  I didn't mean it.  Really I didn't."  She looked up at me and smiled.

I wasn't sure how to respond to her.  I knew she meant what she was saying, but I also knew that in essence she was a child and would always think like a child.  And, that in itself could be dangerous.  "I know you didn't mean it."

"So, I'm back now and everything's okay, right?"

"Miranda Jean, I'm really glad you're back.  But I think we need to talk about something.  I'm always going to be with Stephen and the girls, even though I'll always love you, too.  Do you understand that?"

She nodded her head.  "I do, I really do.  And I won't fool around anymore, I won't do anymore tricks.  I won't be bad, I promise."

"You're not bad.  I don't want you to think that you're bad.  Okay?  But please, Miranda Jean, please tell me why you started the fire.  Why did you want to hurt us?"

Her face took on a curious expression.  "I didn't want to hurt you or your babies at all.  All I wanted was to be with you.  So I guess I thought if we couldn't be together because you were so busy with Stephen and the babies, then maybe if you could come to where I was, then we could really be together again, forever."

Aggie was right.  Although I wouldn't really call what Miranda Jean had done a haunting.  I finally understood it.  I understood everything.  She had been alone for such a long time.  Even when she was with me, she was still alone.  Like a man suddenly turned invisible, she was an undiscovered planet in an unknown universe.  I could not imagine a more lonely or painful existence.  And in this epiphany I realized that it was me that had been holding onto her so tightly. I was the one preventing her from moving on to where she belonged.  I had, without any thought for her, been holding her prisoner.

My eyes filled to overflowing, but I had no right to be released from this pain, not when I had been the cause of so much pain for her.  "I'm sorry I made you feel so alone.  But I know you understand that's not the answer for us, don't you?  It's not for us to decide when we live or when we die.  Is it?"

"No."  She smiled, but it took real effort on her part and the smile never fully reached her eyes.  "Sarah Jane, it's harder now that you're all grown up.  We don't like to do the same things anymore and well, even talking about stuff is different.  You're not the same, are you?"

I held her closer for a moment and laid my cheek on the top of her head.  "You're right, I'm not the same as you anymore.  It's almost like we're not identical twins anymore, isn't it?  But I think if you had grown up too, we would probably be just the same, don't you think?"

She pulled back from me and a big smile covered her face.  "Really, do you really think so?  Maybe I would be married too.  And maybe I would have twin baby girls too, and we could live next door to each other and we could have coffee and cake every morning after our husbands went to work.  Do you really think so?"

"I think you've imagined it just as it would have been, just exactly as it would have been.  Two peas in a pod, just like Sousa used to say.  It would be so wonderful, Miranda Jean, so very, very wonderful.  I'm so sorry that you didn't get the chance to grow up with me."

Don't feel sad Sarah Jane," she patted my shoulder, "really, it's okay.  We sure had a lot of fun when we were together, didn't we?  And I  sure got us into a lot of trouble sometimes, didn't I?"

"Just enough to matter, but not enough to get spanked.  It was always the perfect balance, just like we were.  But you know we don't balance anymore, don't you?  You're still a child and I'm all grown up."

"You want me to go away, don't you."

"No, that's not what I want at all.  But I think that's what's supposed to happen, and I think I've been keeping you here, when you should be moving on to somewhere much better than here.  You see everyone has a place.  Somewhere they're supposed to be, like Stephen and I and the girls belong here."

She got very quiet and still and the smile on her face disappeared.

"Miranda Jean you know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

Slowly she nodded her head.  "I know, but I don't want to go there without you Sarah Jane.  I'll be more alone than ever and I don't like to be alone.  I want to be with you."

I put my arms around her again and kissed her forehead.  "Oh, but you won't be alone at all.  Grandma and Grandpa will be there and our old dog, Samson and it will be wonderful there, I promise.  You can watch over me and Stephen and maybe even be a guardian angel for Catherine and Julia.  I promise you it will be wonderful.  You have to move on, Miranda Jean.  It's not right that you're still here.  Do you know how to do it, to move on, I mean?"

She nodded her head.  "I think so.  I tried a couple of times, when you couldn't see me.  But I couldn't do it, besides I wanted to be with you.  Do you really think I could be an angel?  Even after the fire?  I didn't really want you to get hurt.  I just missed you so much, I wanted you to be with me."

I stroked her hair and then her cheek.  "I know honey, I know.  Yes, I think you  can still be an angel.  I think everything will be just fine.  Do you think you could do it now, move on?"

She stood up and walked a few feet from me.  "I see it, but I can't move, I can't.  Something is pulling at me."

I was sure I had let her go.  I knew she should go and I was ready.  What was holding her back?  Maybe it was her, maybe she just wouldn't do it.  "You have to go, it will be alright."

"You have to let go of me, Sarah Jane, just let me go.  You'll be alright."  She turned to me and smiled.

I opened my mouth to argue with her, but then I felt it.  My whole body tensed and I realized I was tightly holding on to her with every part of me, heart and soul.  I had to let her go.  I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and let go.  "Can you feel it now, can you see it?"

"I do Sarah Jane, I really do."  She took a few more steps and then disappeared.  A moment later I heard her voice, very faintly.  "I'll watch you, Sarah Jane.  I love you."

Inside of me I felt something open up.  It was an actual physical pain, as if something had been removed.  Perhaps it was a part of my heart or maybe my soul.  If I were to die and they did an autopsy, would they find a portion of me missing?  I was certain that they would, for how could they not?