Catherine Coulter's Contemporary Romantic Thrillers by Catherine Coulter

Author:Catherine Coulter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-12-04T05:00:00+00:00

Epilogue

Pine Hill Hospital

Long Island, New York

April 2001

I dreamed he came to me last night. He took my hand and leaned down close to my face and said, “Hello, Margaret.”

That was all he said for a very long time.

I wasn’t surprised to see him, even though I suppose I should have been. Things are easy to accept in dreams.

I knew he was looking at me, and it seemed very odd that he would just stare without saying anything, until I realized that he hadn’t seen me for twenty-six years.

A very long time for a woman. Too long.

But in my eyes he hadn’t changed, because I’d watched him over the years, so often studied his photographs, so that the years had come easily, and altered him only gradually. He seemed untouched to me.

And then he started speaking, his voice low and tender, and he told me he’d met our daughter and how lovely she was.

Odd that I didn’t wonder how he could have met Rafaella, his daughter. But he had; somehow I knew that was true.

He was silent again, but he didn’t release my hand. I wished I could speak to him, perhaps even tell him how very sorry I was, but I realized that I wasn’t sorry, no, I’d thought about it all very carefully for a very long time. No, I wasn’t sorry. I did wish I could say something to him, but it was the sort of dream that is so very real but whose dreamer can’t act, can’t participate, can’t speak. But I thought about what I’d say to him if I could speak. There were so many things, years upon years of things to say. Then I realized that as soon as I thought of these things; formulated them in my mind, they lessened in their importance until they were nothing at all. It was odd, but it was so.

And then he said, leaning down and kissing my mouth, “I must go, Margaret. I must leave now. Your life is yours again. It’s over, finally over. It’s time for you to wake up, Margaret. It’s time for you to live.”

And then, just as suddenly as he’d appeared in the dream, he was gone. In the time it took me to draw a breath, it was over and he had vanished. It was all blackness again, and I breathed slowly and deeply and wondered.

This time I knew he would be gone forever.

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