The Holding Place

Chapter Twenty-One

Abby...





I do not know if I am hurting more than helping Michael. I sensed him slipping away from Norah and it was something that I could not let him do. He has finally looked at her the way that he hasn’t since I have been alive. He is now viewing her as much as part of him as she is of me. She may look like me but it will be him who shapes her into the woman she will grow up to be. I will have no part of that.


Blaine is staring at me with his mouth agape. He knows what I have just done and is waiting for the repercussions. I am as terrified as he is at this moment. It isn’t the way of this place to reach over to the other side. It is a rule that has no need to be spoken aloud. There is a balance to this realm just as there is from the one I previously came from.


Blaine and I are both here to search for a way out. I cannot say exactly when it hit me but we both know why we are here. It is a reason that isn’t meant to be put into words. I have tried many times to conceptualize such a reason but words fail me every time, even when trying to put them together in my mind.


Several moments pass and nothing happens. Blackness has not swallowed me up. Blaine and I are still standing here watching the visit play out between Michael, Catherine and Norah. Relief sweeps over me. This time I have been spared another rule broken. I don’t know how lucky I will be the next time.


“We cannot interfere!” Blaine cries angrily.


I let my shoulders slump and turn away from him. He comes up behind me quickly and harshly spins me around to face him. His eyes are filled with fear and rage. I could have cost him the only chance he has to escape this hell of an existence.


“What was I supposed to do?” I ask, my tone matching his anger. “He could have lost her forever.”


He knows how that type of pain feels. I now know that story of why the Reggie woman is important to him. She is his everything just as Michael is my own. Blaine has been watching her in the same way that I have been watching Michael. He is at a loss to help her.


“Abby, why ask a question you already know the answer to?”


I hate how he always answers a question with a question. It is the quickest way to irritate me.  He has been in this place for much longer that I. Why must he always keep me guessing and second guessing my every mood and thought? Does he not know that each day that passes by in this eternity that my soul is chipped at a little bit more? How much more must I endure before I am to find rest?


Blaine has not said anything for several minutes and I continue to stare at him petulantly.


“I know what you are thinking,” he says.


I remain silent.


“It is impossible to stay in this place forever because it isn’t meant for forever.”


I roll my eyes at him. He is always speaking in riddles to me and I am tired of trying to fit the puzzle together. I am tired of everything. I am ready to give up.


“Even when we want to give up we are not allowed. Our internal anguish refuses to allow us. You must know why I am with you now.”


I expel a breath angrily. “I don’t have a clue as to why Blaine and you damn well know that I do not!”


He gestures over to the scene in front of us and no longer am I watching Norah and Michael in the visitor’s room. He is sitting on a bench with Reggie with his hand laced inside her own. An unexpected lurch of pain entangles in my heart. I understand what this scene means but I am not sure if what I am looking at is a dream or reality.


“It is very much real. They are both getting ready to leave today.”


Panic is rising up to my throat. “Leaving? Where?”


Blaine gives me a short shrug of his shoulders. “I don’t know. We don’t get to know that part.”


“Blaine, what do you mean?”


“It means that this part of our journey is over.”


Blaine reaches out his hand to me in the way that he did on the night that I died. Fear suddenly melts away. By the cab that is waiting for Michael is a familiar glow of light that is waiting for us. Almost absently I place my hand into Blaine’s.  The feeling is different this time. The warm glow of his hand envelopes my entire being and for a brief moment everything is peaceful.


We stop at the door to turn towards Michael and Reggie as they make their way to the cab that is waiting patiently to take them to wherever it is that they are going.