Child of Her Dreams. Joan Kilby
where your girlhood went.”
“We’re just friends,” Miranda protested. “Anyway, you and Uncle Max were childhood sweethearts.”
“Exactly.” Kelly rinsed the pot and handed it to Geena. “I hear the new doctor is quite a hunk. Indiana Jones with a stethoscope.”
Miranda snorted disparagingly. “Dr. Matthews is way better looking than Harrison Ford.”
“I’ve spent enough time around doctors lately, thanks very much,” Geena said. “Not that I’m not grateful to them for saving my life.”
“What actually happened to you in Italy, Gee?” Erin asked. “You’ve hardly told us anything. It was a heart attack, right?”
Geena wiped the pot dry, marveling that she could take pleasure in mundane chores. “My heart stopped. Apparently I was clinically dead for two minutes.” Laughing, she rapped her skull with her knuckles. “No brain damage—at least, not that I can tell.”
Kelly shivered. “It must have been awful.”
“Not entirely,” Geena said slowly, looking from Kelly to Erin to Gran. She hadn’t told them about her near-death experience. She wasn’t sure what their reactions would be. She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. The experience had changed her in ways so subtle she hadn’t yet fully grasped their significance. Every morning she woke up with a great gladness to be alive. And sometimes she stopped in the middle of whatever she was doing and looked, really looked, at what was around her. As if the world was brand-new. Or she was.
But something in her voice had captured the others’ attention, and now all eyes were on her. Geena took a deep breath. She might as well tell them. “I had a near-death experience. I went to the other side and came back.”
“What!” Erin and Kelly exclaimed together.
At the abrupt sound, Erik awoke with a jerk, one hand flung quivering in the air. Miranda’s eyes went round. Gran’s eyebrows rose above the wide plastic frames of her glasses, and the click of needles fell silent as she paused, yarn looped around her index finger.
Erin picked up her baby. “Don’t cry, honey,” she cooed, then turned to Geena. “Do you mean, as in flying through a tunnel toward a bright light?”
“Yes! It was so amazing I can hardly describe it.” Words tumbled from her lips at the relief of finally sharing her experience. “I didn’t know what was happening at first, not until I saw my body lying below me. There was darkness and I was moving through a tunnel toward a light. Everything—past, present and future—was there in the tunnel. All around me was a noise, a kind of icy sizzle, like moonbeams hitting water, if you know what I mean.”
Their blank stares told her they didn’t. Geena frowned, frustrated at the effort of describing something that couldn’t be described in words. “The light was brighter than any sun,” she went on. “As I got closer to the light I experienced an intense feeling of peace and love, joy and rapture and gladness and…” Her arms were uplifted when she ran out of breath. “Bliss. Pure bliss.”
“Were you…on anything at the time?” Erin asked carefully.
Geena dropped her arms. “What do you mean?”
“Were you taking any…medication?”
“I’d been on diet pills,” Geena admitted. “I use sleeping pills occasionally. And sometimes pills to wake me up.”
“Pills to make you feel good?”
Geena crossed her arms over her chest. “No. I didn’t have this experience because I was drugged.”
Gran tugged some yarn loose from the ball on the floor, and her cat, Chloe, a blur of blue-gray fur, leaped from behind a chair to attack it. “I read an article once about a woman who had a near-death experience during heart surgery,” Gran said. “Sounded pretty similar.”
“Thank you, Gran.” Geena relaxed her fists.
“Geena, honey, we love you. We didn’t mean to imply anything,” Erin said. Kelly nodded in silent agreement.
But Geena could see they were still skeptical.
“Anyway, I’m off all those pills. I quit smoking, too. The doctors made me go cold turkey in the hospital.” She sighed as she looked at herself. “I’ve been gaining weight ever since.”
“It’s good you quit smoking.” Erin paused. “But as far as your size goes, Tammy was right, you’ve lost weight. You weren’t even this thin two months ago at my wedding.”
Geena did not want to get sidetracked into discussing her weight. She adored her sisters, but they didn’t understand the pressures a model was under. Besides, she still had the most important part of her story to tell.
“I saw Mom,” she said, almost defiantly. “She said to give her love to all of you.”
“Geena, when you say you saw Mom, you mean as in a dream, right?” Erin said. Erik stirred in her arms, and she reached under her blouse to unhook her nursing bra.
Geena watched her sister adjust Erik at her breast, and her heart clenched with longing. She wanted to tell them about the baby Mom promised she would have, but then Erin and Kelly would think she was completely nuts. Sometimes when she thought of the baby, even she wondered if she hadn’t imagined the whole experience.
“It was as real as being here with you today. She told me it wasn’t my time and that I had to go back. Well, she didn’t actually speak. It was more like telepathic communication.”
“Telepathic,” Kelly repeated skeptically.
“She also said Dad wasn’t drunk the night they died,” Geena said, ignoring her. “They swerved to avoid a dog.”
“That’s the first we’ve heard of a dog,” Erin said. “It’s plausible, but impossible to prove.”
Geena blinked. “Do I have to prove this happened?”
“Of course not. But you’ve got to admit, it’s a bit far-fetched. You’ve been under a lot of pressure. It would be natural for your mind to play tricks on you,” Erin said. “Maybe you should talk to the doctor, see what he says.”
“I might just do that.” A doctor was bound to have patients who had experienced near death and lived to tell about it. A doctor would reassure her she wasn’t imagining things.
“How long are you staying?” Erin asked, raising Erik to her shoulder to pat his back. “I hope you’re not going to flit off too quickly. We miss you.”
“I’ll be around for a few months. I told my agent not to accept any new jobs until I’ve fully recovered.” The truth was, she felt a little confused about her future direction, but the fashion industry was all she knew.
Kelly drained the sink and dried her hands on a towel as she glanced at the kitchen shelf clock Erin had left behind for Gran when she’d married Nick. “Gosh, look at the time. I’d better get my kids home. Geena, come over for dinner real soon. My lasagna will put some meat back on your bones.”
Geena hugged her sister, knowing she meant well. “Thanks, Kel.”
Erin carefully lifted her drowsy baby against her shoulder and gave Geena a one-armed hug. “I’d better go, too. Erik always sleeps better in his own crib. Take care of yourself, Gee. We’ve been so worried about you. We want you to get completely well.”
“I will, don’t worry.”
Geena walked them to the door and waited until Erin and Kelly had rounded up their families, bundled all the children into their respective cars and driven away. After they left, she sat on the painted wooden steps of Gran’s big old Victorian home, the home she and her sisters had grown up in after their parents had died.
Scents of late summer wafted on a warm breeze—roses; mown grass;