The Devil in Canaan Parish (29 page)

I walked toward them for a moment, and my heart leapt at the sound of a voice that called me.

“Tite Melee?”

“Marraine!”
   

It was her, even more beautiful than I remembered her.
 
She held a gnarled hand out to me and I put mine in hers.
 
She was so strong and gentle.

“Hello, sweetheart,” came another voice.
 
It was my grandmother, her white halo of hair floating around her pretty wrinkled face.
 
She took my other hand in hers and I walked forward between the two pillars of my childhood.
 
Each held a candle in one hand and pulled me along with the other. Gabriel and the baby girl followed along behind.

Ahead in the distance, there was one more candle.
 
We didn’t speak, but I knew that we were heading toward it with purpose.
 
I felt excitement building in my chest, though I didn’t know why.
 
As we got closer I saw that the candle was held by a woman – beautiful and tall, with blond hair, but with the same gray-green eyes that I shared with the baby girl.
 
She seemed not much older than me.
 
I had never seen her before, and yet there was something so familiar about her.
 
I wanted to run to her, to put my arms around her neck and hold her tightly.

She smiled at me, holding a lit candle in one hand and an unlit one in the other.
 
As I approached, she held the wick of the one into the flame of the other, transferring the light over, and then she handed the brightly burning candle out to me.

“Amy Lee,” she said. “I have been waiting a long time.”

And with that, my mother laced her arm around my waist and led me away to eternity.

THE END