Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon,
You come and go, you come and go.
The old radio blasted the song at a decibel that she normally would never have listened to.
But she could not bring herself to care about her neighbors complaining or her hearing disappearing.
Life without her husband was not really worth anything anymore.
When you go you're gone forever.
Gone forever.
She threw the radio against the wall and cried.
She had spent almost twenty years building up the practice with her husband. For what? Them to one day decide on a whim to move to Australia and run away from the life they had worked so, so hard to create?
For her husband to have a heart attack? For him to die less than a week after they uprooted everything?
Why had they come here? Why had seeing that stupid windchime killed him?
Now she was stuck in a country she knew next to nothing about, widowed and alone.
And she hated Culture Club.
"Monica? The doctor will see you now."
She tightened her grip on her purse as she walked into the hallway leading in the small doctor's office.
"Mrs. Wilkins, I have gotten your tests back. It seems that you are a very lucky woman. Not very many women are able to get pregnant at your age."
Pregnant?
"I. . . I can't possibly be. . . my husband is gone. I can't be. . . I'm forty three!"
She cried.
"Love? . . . if you. . . if you can hear me Wendell, can you tell me what I'm supposed to do? Can you give me a sign?"
Monica Wilkins leaned against the railing of the dock, staring off at the wide open sea spilling out before her.
She was nearly eighteen weeks along in her pregnancy, and nearly seventeen weeks had passed since her husband had died.
She was going home, back to England. To the place they had lived. Staying here? Raising a child here? Where he had died? It wasn't right.
His child, her child, their child, would grow up seeing all the places where her husband had loved-not the last things he saw before he died.
The color of the sea. It was the color of the little pieces of broken glass that made up the windchime.
It was beautiful.
And haunting.
She wanted to leave the windchime behind. She wasn't sure why they had brought it in the first place-or why they had bought it. It looked like a child had made it.
But she couldn't leave it behind.
The first night back was the worst.
Her thoughts were plagued with memories of him, and her nightmares were full of cerulean light striking them both down.
Their house had not sold. She took it off the market and paid the realtor a healthy sum.
She stayed in their bedroom for nearly two weeks before she moved to the guest room to sleep.
The nightmares did not stop.
"Oh! Mrs. Granger! It's lovely to see you again. I was afraid you and your husband had moved away without warning!"
Monica stood in front of the fresh potatoes and felt a shiver crawl across her back.
"I. . . I think you might have me-Sarah?" Monica recognized the woman as soon as she turned around.
She had been her neighbor since they bought the house as newlyweds.
"Oh course it's me, Melinda. I thought you were selling your house but the for sale signs disappeared and yet I never saw hide nor hair of you or your husband."
Monica's heart ached.
She missed him so much.
"Actually, for that matter, I haven't seen your daughter in quite some time. Does she not visit anymore?"
Monica looked up at the taller woman's face. She felt a chill wash over her.
Sarah's eyes were cerulean blue.
Like the ocean.
Like the glass in the windchime.
Like the nightmarish light.
Hermione.
"Melinda? Are you okay?"
Her stomach clenched.
Cold, wet.
Between her legs.
The baby.
"Melinda Granger? Did you have a name for the baby? For his death certificate?"
"Wendell. . . Wendell Wilkins Granger."
"Karma karma karma cerulean. Cerulean, cerulean." she sang lightly to herself, holding the basket of flowers she'd gathered from the back garden for Wendell's headstone.
"Harry, you don't understand! I can't find them! They were moving to Australia and yet their stuff is still here! What if they were killed before they got out?"
"Hermione! Calm down. Did you check with the neighbors?"
Hermione?
HERMIONE?
"Hermione? Hermione!" she yelled, throwing the basket on the table in her kitchen and running through the house.
"Mum?! Mum!"
She held her daughter in her arms and cried.
The cerulean glass windchime they had made together tinkled softly.
She had lost her husband. And her son.
But regained a daugher.