Halloween night had no moon. There was no rain but plenty of wind and its howl could heard whipping through the trees and eventually knocking the shutter loose that Nick had only recently nailed back to the outside wall. The sound it made when it banged against the house gave a spooky punctuation to the eeriness of the wind.
It was an otherwise ordinary evening for the family. There was the usual talk about ranch business and some stinging sibling repartee. Victoria was the first to retire to bed.
The sun was shining through the morning mist when she awoke the next day. She felted rested but strange somehow. The fire in her fireplace was now smoldering embers and she decided not to rekindle it. And then like a bolt she remembered her dream.
A woman had come to her room, this room. Victoria recalled seeing the woman in silhouette, standing in the open doorway, looking at her. In her dream, Victoria had propped herself up on her elbows and had asked the woman what she wanted. She wasn't scared or angry at the intrusion. In fact, in her dream, it had seemed perfectly normal that a strange woman would simply appear. The woman entered the room and the door had closed behind her without human assistance, slowly, gently. This, too, seemed natural to Victoria in her dream though in the consciousness of the morning it seemed very unnatural, indeed.
Victoria could make out the woman's features in the fire's glow. She was young, blond, pretty. She was dressed in simple clothes, nothing fancy. She had a sweet smile on her face that seemed vaguely familiar to Victoria.
The visitor stared at Victoria for a moment and Victoria remembered that even this did not make her uncomfortable.
Then the woman spoke directly to her in a voice that was soft, melodious, and tinged with a Southern accent.
"Thank you for loving my boy, Heath," was all she said.
Victoria could not remember if she had responded to her. What she did remember, quite vividly, was that the woman had faded away. Victoria remembered thinking how odd to be able to see through the woman's body. And then she was gone.
What a lovely dream, Victoria thought. How nice it would have been to actually meet Leah, the woman with whom she shared two loves, Tom and Heath. She considered for a moment that she might not have found such a meeting to be lovely had they met all those years ago. But now with Tom gone and all the time which had passed . . .
She dressed and brushed her hair, still thinking about her dream of meeting Leah.
At breakfast, Nick and Heath discussed their plans for the day which included nailing that shutter back to the wall again. Jarrod was amiable, Nick was boisterous, Audra was giddy about an upcoming dance. Heath seemed slightly distracted.
"That was some wind storm last night," Jarrod offered.
There was a general round of everyone nodding and agreeing with the comment and then Heath, looking down at his plate, added, "I had the strangest dream. It seemed so real." He looked up and over at Victoria and continued, "I dreamed I went out to fix that shutter and when I opened the front door, my mother was there and asked me where your room was. So I told her and she went in the house and I went out like it was an everyday thing for my mother to be here."
Victoria felt a chill but chose not to say anything about her dream. Not then. She needed to think about Heath's dream and her own coinciding.
After breakfast, Nick and Heath went directly to the see about the loose shutter and found it wasn't loose anymore. It was, in fact, fastened to the outside wall by a nail. Nick said the shutter, holding the nail, had simply slammed into the wall with such force that it had re-nailed its own self to the wall. Heath accepted this explanation but at the same time thought he could remember being at that shutter at night, in a wind storm, and hammering the nail. He said nothing to Nick.
The dream about his mother stayed with Heath the rest of the day. It bothered him a lot that he would dream so vividly of his mother yet not jump for joy at seeing her, or hold her, or tell her that he loved her, and make her stay.
A cool breeze blew past him and within it Leah whispered, "But I am always with you, Heath." All Heath could hear was a gentle rustle of leaves and grasses.