Sisters, Long Ago Read online

  “Not now,” Mrs. Clauson said.

  “These came for you,” Willow said, “and I promised I’d bring them over as soon as you got home.”

  “Come back later. I—I’m in my bathrobe.”

  “That’s OK. Here, I’ll just hand them to you quickly.” Willow lifted the vase and held it toward the door.

  Mrs. Clauson opened her door far enough to put out an arm. She reached for the flowers.

  The moment Mrs. Clauson’s hand touched the vase, Willow yelled, “Here, Jojo.”

  Instantly, the red-haired woman called, too. “Jojo! Come!”

  Mrs. Clauson tried to close the door but she moved too slowly. Before she could stop him, a yellow terrier bolted between her legs and flung himself at the woman.

  “Jojo,” the woman said and promptly burst into tears.

  The dog gave excited little yips.

  The woman picked him up and hugged him. “I told you she had him,” she said to the officer. “I know the sound of my own dog’s voice.”

  The officer reached over and looked at the tag that hung from the terrier’s collar. Willow looked, too. It said, “JOJO,” followed by a woman’s name and telephone number.

  The officer turned to Mrs. Clauson, who stood in the doorway, watching. “I’d like you to come down to the station with me,” he said.

  Mrs. Clauson’s shoulders sagged. She seemed to shrink right before Willow’s eyes. “I can’t get by on my Social Security,” she said. “People who feed a dog can afford to help me. I only take pampered pets, from fancy cars or big houses. I never . . .” She was still talking as the officer helped her into the back seat of the patrol car.

  He turned back to the red-haired woman. “Do you want to press charges?” he asked.

  The woman hesitated, then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I want to be sure she doesn’t do this to someone else.”

  Willow watched them drive away. Then she picked up the phone and called Gretchen.

  * * *

  ON FRIDAY, a few kids had excuses why their Hell Week projects weren’t finished but most of the class turned their papers in. Willow’s was longer than the ten required pages. Even so, she was nervous about what Mr. Barclay would think of it. It was not, she knew, a usual report. She had written far more than the information she’d found in the library books.

  Her history class was first period. At lunch time, as she was leaving the cafeteria, Mr. Barclay saw her.

  “I read your report this morning,” he said. “It’s one of the best I’ve ever seen. Some of your descriptions are so vivid, they sound as if you really lived in Egypt during the time of the New Kingdom.”

  I did, Willow thought. But she couldn’t tell Mr. Barclay that.

  20

  “SARAH IS dead.” Dr. Rogers spoke slowly, forcing the words past his lips. “Liver failure.”

  It was one week after the transplant.

  This can’t be true, Willow thought. It’s a terrible mistake. But as she looked at the tears trickling down her father’s cheeks and at the incredible pain in her mother’s eyes, she knew there was no mistake.

  “I thought she was going to make it,” Dr. Rogers said. “I’m—sorry.” His voice broke. Through her tears, Willow saw that he was weeping, too.

  That night, Willow went into Sarah’s room. She touched Sarah’s pillow; she ran her hand across the top of Sarah’s dresser. When no more tears came, she sat alone, staring out the window.

  A full moon glowed like a ceiling lamp, dimly lighting the shrubs and grass. The same way it lit the road for Kalos when she went to the temple, Willow thought.

  Would Sarah have another life some time? Would she live again in a different body? Would she stand in a faraway place, in a distant time, and look up at the moon?

  Willow thought a belief in reincarnation ought to make it easier to say good-bye to her sister, but it didn’t help at all. No matter how many other lives Sarah might live, she would never again have this life. She would never again be Sarah Peony, sister of Willow Sweet Pea. She would never live in this house or sleep in this bed. She would not grow up and wear a cap and gown at graduation. If Willow got married some day, Sarah would not be there to be the Maid of Honor.

  Maybe Dr. Rogers was right. Maybe the white light had no healing powers. It had not helped Sarah. Neither had Gretchen’s prayer chain.

  Still, she was glad she’d told Sarah about the white light, and how she could feel it around her any time she wanted to. She was glad she told her about Kalos, too, and about seeing Grandma and Grandpa.

  At least, Willow thought, I don’t have to beat myself up for not saying things to her when I had the chance. There wasn’t much I could do to help her, but I did what I could. And it helped a little. It gave her hope. Perhaps it gave her peace.

  * * *

  THE PAIGES held a memorial service for Sarah the next Saturday at Pinecone Park. A tape recorder played Sarah’s favorite songs and two of Sarah’s friends read brief poems.

  Willow held a cluster of white helium balloons. At the end of the service, she released them. The music played while the balloons rose into the cloudless blue sky.

  Willow stared until the last balloon climbed out of sight.

  Behind her, someone said, “I’m sorry about your sister.” It was Mrs. Evans.

  “I’ve thought of you often,” Mrs. Evans went on.

  “You have?”

  “Yes. I try to meditate every day and as part of my meditation, I always send my thoughts to friends who are in difficult situations.”

  “How?” Willow asked. “How do you send your thoughts?”

  “I get in a comfortable chair, where I know I won’t be disturbed, and I close my eyes. Then I visualize the person I want to help and I send my thoughts to that person.”

  Willow swallowed. “What time did you send me your thoughts?” she asked.

  “I try to meditate as soon as I get to my office, usually around 8:30 every morning.”

  “Oh.” At 8:30 in the morning, Willow was in school.

  “Of course, I don’t always have time then. One day, a week or two ago, I had such a full schedule that I didn’t meditate until just before I went home. Five o’clock.”

  “What thought did you send to me? Exactly?”

  “I always say the same thing: I am thinking of you. I think of you every day and wish the best for you and your sister.”

  Willow felt goosebumps on the back of her neck. So she had received a message. She did pick up those words, via mental telepathy, when she was trying to contact Helen. She had believed the words were from Helen when all along it was Mrs. Evans who was thinking of her.

  “I heard you,” Willow said. “I knew someone was sending that message to me.”

  “I’m sorry that the good thoughts were not enough to keep Sarah here with you longer.”

  “I tried to give the white light to Sarah,” Willow said. “I felt it around me so strongly and I could see it surrounding her, too, but it didn’t do any good. It didn’t help her.”

  “You don’t know that. Perhaps it made Sarah feel safe and unafraid. Maybe when her liver failed, she was able to follow the light out of this life and into the next.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Since other people were waiting to talk to Willow, Mrs. Evans started to move on.

  “Wait,” Willow said, putting her hand on Mrs. Evans’s arm.

  Mrs. Evans paused.

  “I had another dream about Kalos,” Willow said. “And I think . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I think she sent me a message. Does that ever happen?”

  “Often. When I do regressions, I have my patients ask the people they visualize whether there is any message for them.”

  “This wasn’t a regression. It was a dream. A plain old dream.”

  “Dreams are important. Sometimes our dreams can help us make decisions about what we should do.”

  Willow thought about that for a moment. Her drea
ms didn’t show her what to do. Mostly, they just confused her.

  “Do you want to tell me about the message from Kalos?” Mrs. Evans asked.

  “I can’t remember it exactly. It’s in a different language. Egyptian, I think. I wrote it down; it’s in my notebook at home. It has some weird spellings, like x-u.”

  “If you want to send it to me, I’ll do some research and see if I can translate it for you.”

  “Thanks,” Willow said. “I’ll send it tomorrow.”

  Willow turned to see who else was waiting to talk to her. It was a group of kids from Sarah’s class. One of them was Pete Wellington.

  Willow clenched her teeth angrily. A fat lot of good it did for Pete to show up now. If he was going to come at all, why didn’t he do it when it might have helped Sarah? She was tempted to say that, except she didn’t want to start an argument here, knowing how it would distress her mother.

  “I’m really sorry,” Pete mumbled, as he looked at Willow’s feet.

  “Thank you for coming,” Willow said.

  Pete’s head jerked up and his eyes met hers. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I—I wish I’d gone to see her, before.”

  To her surprise, Willow felt sorry for him. It would be terrible to know you had failed to help a friend who needed you, and to carry that regret all your life.

  * * *

  THE NEXT day her parents said they wanted to get away for a time and the three of them left, just like that, without reservations or anything, and went to the ocean for a week. They said Willow could make up her schoolwork when they got back.

  Willow walked for miles up the beach, exploring tidepools and throwing a stick for Muttsie to retrieve. She ate clam chowder and watched some fishermen and helped her dad put out a crab pot.

  In the evenings, they built a fire in the fireplace of the rented cabin and played three-handed Hearts. They read books or made popcorn or sat by the fire and told stories.

  One night they talked about Sarah.

  “We were lucky to have Sarah,” Mrs. Paige said. “I didn’t want to let her go yet but I’m glad we had her, even for such a short time.”

  “We still have our memories,” Mr. Paige said. “Remember the time Grandma and Grandpa said they would take all of us out for dinner to celebrate Sarah’s birthday? And Sarah got to choose where we would go.”

  Willow smiled in the firelight. It was a favorite family story and even though she’d heard it dozens of times, she always liked to hear it again.

  “It was her sixth birthday,” Mrs. Paige said. “I was glad that I didn’t have to cook a fancy dinner. I suggested all the best restaurants, and Sarah said she needed to think about it.”

  “I hoped she would choose Wendy’s or Pizza Hut,” Willow said.

  “Not me,” Mrs. Paige said. “I hoped she would pick a good seafood restaurant, with a view.”

  “She kept us all in suspense until the day before her birthday,” Mr. Paige said. “Then Grandma told Sarah she had to make up her mind or it would be too late to get a reservation. And that’s when Sarah said . . .” Here Mr. Paige paused and then all three of them said Sarah’s line together:

  “What I really want is to stay home on my birthday and eat canned spaghetti.”

  “Canned spaghetti!” Mrs. Paige said. “When we could have gone to the fanciest restaurant in town.”

  They laughed together, the three of them, as shadows from the firelight played tag across their faces. It felt good to laugh again. It had been such a long time since Willow and her parents had laughed together. She wished Sarah were there to laugh with them.

  As if she were thinking the same thing, Mrs. Paige said, “When we remember the good times, I feel as if Sarah is still with us.”

  “We can visit her any time we want,” Mr. Paige said, “through our memories.”

  Just like my carnival, Willow thought. I can go there whenever I want, too.

  And the white light? Could she still feel it?

  She hadn’t felt the light since the night before Sarah’s transplant, when she visualized sending it to Sarah in the hospital. In her shock and grief since Sarah’s death, she had not cared about white lights or mental telepathy or past lives.

  Now she wondered if the light was still there. Since it failed to save Sarah’s life, was it powerless, after all?

  The moment she tried to feel it again, it was there. Once more, she glowed with an inner radiance. Once more, she felt glad, and strong. The white light couldn’t save Sarah’s life but it could give her the strength to endure Sarah’s death. She would face whatever life might bring, and still feel joy.

  Like the carnival, the light came from within her and nothing external could ever take it away. For the rest of her life, it would give her courage and bring her joy.

  That night, she dreamed of Sarah, but in the dream, Sarah’s name wasn’t Sarah. It was Huzein.

  Huzein and Kalos stood together early one morning, watching the sun rise. Kalos, who was older than in the previous dreams, smiled fondly at her younger sister. Huzein was so much like herself. She was everything Kalos had hoped she would be, before she was born.

  “I will tell you a secret,” Huzein said. “Of all our family, you are most dear to me.”

  “And you to me,” Kalos said.

  Willow didn’t have to write the dream down in order to remember it. She knew she would never forget.

  Huzein and Sarah were the same. One soul in two bodies. She had found Sarah in more than one lifetime; she would find her again.

  21

  ON THEIR way home from the beach, the Paiges stopped at a nursery and bought fifteen peony plants, one for each year of Sarah’s life. They dug a new flower bed in their front yard, added mulch and fertilizer, and planted the peonies.

  “It’s a fitting memorial,” Mr. Paige said, as he tamped the dirt down with his shoes.

  “The Sarah Peony Paige Memorial Garden,” Willow said, as she covered the area with mulch.

  Mrs. Paige wiped tears from her cheeks.

  There were two letters waiting for Willow. The first was from Scotland. It said:

  Dear Willow,

  Last week I had the flu. My temperature was 103°. One night, when I was so sick, I had the strangest dream. I had long black hair, in tight ringlets, and a white linen dress. I sat at a loom, weaving, in a strange house made of clay. I didn’t look at all like me, yet I knew it was me.

  I can’t be sure but I think maybe I dreamed of Tiy. Please write again soon and tell me what you’ve learned about Egypt.

  Love,

  Helen (Your Egyptian sister)

  The second letter was from Mrs. Evans.

  Dear Willow:

  I found the phrase you sent me, from your dream.

  “Nuk uā em ennu en Xu ammu Xu” is from The Egyptian Book of the Dead. It means, “I am one of those shining beings who lives in light.”

  I hope this helps you.

  Mrs. Evans

  Willow read the translation again and then sat quietly, with the letter in her lap. “I am one of those shining beings who lives in light.”

  So Kalos had felt the white light, too. She felt it and she knew it made her special. She wanted Willow to know, to recognize her own specialness.

  A shining being.

  I do know, Willow thought. I know that life is like the carnival, full of music and laughter and joy. All I have to do is open the door and experience it.

  I knew it then, in ancient Egypt, and I know it now.

  I am one of those shining beings who lives in light.

 

 

 
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