***
Nathaniel pictured the memory as if it had just happened, not like the two-hundred and sixty-one year old recollection that it was. He awoke from the nightmare, but did not open his eyes. It was still light out. He could feel it against his skin through the old musty blankets that kept it out of sight and out of danger. Instead, attempting to shake free from the horror of the past, he thought of the woman. Suddenly, no longer sleeping, but not exactly awake, he really began to dream. He could see himself walking amongst the light. First, there was a beach and his feet sank in the warm sand, and then in the bubbling tide as it crawled up the beach and against him. It hit him again as it rolled back from where it had come. It felt marvelous.
He felt what it might have been like to be a boy on the beach for the first time, considering that he had already become a vampire by the time that he had seen his first beach; his first view of the ocean. He had touched the water, but felt nothing in particular. Now, it was spectacular. He had tasted the salty air long before the water had even come into view that first time. Yet, this was completely new. The salty air was choking him now, and he wanted more!
He stood there and spun around like a boy, taking it all in in one giant gulp—the perfect blue water, the sand that seemed to stretch for miles on either side, the dunes of sand rising up to meet the rocky cliffs, the woman watching him spin with a look of pure delight on her lightly tanned face, the other side of the beach.... He stopped and looked back. Barbara was there. He had never seen such a beautiful smile. And it was all for him. Wait! She was crying. Had he missed something? What could there possibly be here that might make someone cry? This was paradise. Must they leave this splendid place? Is that the explanation for the tears? He reached out to her with a well-manicured hand to touch one tear, and it only later he realized that his hands were claw-free. They were simply strong and fine, nothing more. They were hands for holding the woman of your heart, or the tiny hands of children. They touched no blood or dead thing.
Nathaniel wiped the tears from Barbara’s eyes, but more followed. Why? He meant to ask, but before he could do so he watched as she brought her hands together and clapped. She was clapping her hands as if watching a spectacle and that was when he realized that the spectacle was him. She was celebrating everything that he was and it was bringing her tears of joy!
7:15 p.m.
“Mom?”
Jerod's voice pulled Barbara out of deep thoughts. She was looking at one of the many tabloid news shows, but wasn't really watching it.
“Yeah, honey?” she smiled warmly at her son as he got up off of the floor and stood before her.
“Can I play PlayStation 2?” he asked. “You don't look like you're watching TV anyway.”
How perceptive he's getting, she thought with a smile. Then her smile faded. Or am I just that bad at hiding what's eating me? “Sure, honey. Go ahead.”
“Thanks, Mom!” the boy grinned happily and then quickly turned around and headed for the shelf where the equipment sat.
Barbara swung her feet over the side of the couch where she had been lying and got up. Jerod had asked her how come it had been that she had moved to the couch after her nap only to doze some more. She had just made a joke of it and laughed with him, revealing nothing else. In fact, she did very little dozing. She didn’t do much resting of the eyes, either, but rather scoured the mental picture in her head for clues to what was suddenly going on with her.
She suddenly felt thirsty, which was odd considering the medium size Diet Pepsi that she had had with their fast-food dinner of Carl’s Jr. She had not felt like cooking; actually she hadn’t felt like much of anything since her aborted nap. In any event, she headed for the kitchen and the refrigerator to grab another one. A bottle of water would have been the better choice, but she hoped the jolt of the soft drink would be just the ticket to get her off of the couch. She took the drink, opened it and took a healthy swig until she felt the burn and could stand it no longer. It was then that she noticed that the garbage that had been generated from dinner was overflowing the trashcan. Unable to find any room in the can, Jerod had taken the easy way out and simply piled the trash on top of the lid rather than taking it out like he should have. About to raise her voice to get Jerod’s attention—not enough to wake the twins, of course, but loud enough—another suppressed recollection turned in the currents of her mind and floated to the surface. It was one of her, not Jerod, absently setting the trash there on the lid.
“Oh, good Lord!” she sighed. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Sweetie?” she finally did call out, but not as loud as she had originally intended, and not before turning the corner so that she could see her son. “Listen for your brother and sister. I need to take out the trash.”
“Do you want me to do that, Mom?”
Oh, my angel! She smiled inside as well as out. “No, sweetie. I'll take it out. You go ahead and play.”
“Thanks, Mom!” he grinned back, happily.
Barbara stopped as she closed the door behind her. She shuffled the two bags of garbage in her arms, walked past the side of the house and then headed through the backyard for the alley trashcans. As she walked across the tall grass that Michael would have already cut had he ever been home, a route she had walked perhaps several hundred times, she looked to the heavens and star-gazed. The sky was so clear, it was almost unreal. Every star in the sky was there to be touched or spoken to. It's so clear, it's almost wrong, she thought. It was as if two different pictures were superimposed in some Hollywood special effect. She wasn't an astronomer by any stretch of the imagination; instead, she was simply one who had an eye for beauty. And this scene above her was exactly that: beautiful. She sighed.
When she had reached the back of the yard, she set down the bags and opened the special gate that Michael had built, enabling him, and one day the children, to access the area behind the trash cans. Being in law enforcement, if it were after dark, Michael did not want any member of his family walking in the alley in order to dump the trash. The gate had a latch with an extra ring attached to it. She hooked this ring through the nail that could be found protruding from the fence just behind the opened gate thus holding it open for her. Barbara reached for the lid of the nearest trashcans when something caused her to pause.