She moved gracefully but quickly down the hall in her high heels, stopping only to test the doors, finding most of them locked.
Near the end, knowing time was of the essence and getting desperate, she turned the knob to an unlocked door, sighed a grateful, relieved sigh and opened it to find a broom closet. Without delay, she located the light switch, flipped it on and slid inside, closing the door behind her.
She put her back to it, peered into the empty room and whispered, “I know you’re there.”
The room had no reply.
“Please,” she kept whispering. “For him. Tonight, especially. Please.”
Her eyes shifted around the closet, the shelves filled with cleaning products, piles of dust rags, the corners having brooms and mops resting upright, mop buckets on the floor but that was it.
Nothing else.
“Please,” she repeated, still in a whisper. “We haven’t much time.”
She waited and counted. One second. Two. Three. Four. She got to seven when the air started shimmering and her heart started beating faster.
Then she was there.
And Elle Cameron looked into Fiona Cameron’s ghostly eyes.
“Hurry,” she urged softly.
Fiona shook her head. “It won’t be pleasant. It might even be painful.”
Elle held Fiona’s eyes and repeated urgently, “Hurry.”
Fiona bit her ghostly lip.
“Fiona,” Elle begged, “hurry.”
With a deep breath she didn’t need to take in, Fiona nodded then she surged forward, her ethereal body penetrating Elle’s corporal one, Elle felt the shafts of ice cold slicing through every inch of her flesh, muscle and bone, the pain excruciating but she clenched her teeth and held on.
Then she closed her eyes.
When she opened them, it was Fiona who could see through Elle’s eyes.
Hurry, Elle said into Fiona’s head. It’s the next song.
“I know,” Fiona replied, turning, her fingers closing on the knob, feeling it in her hand, so solid, so real, so surprising when she was in this world, she hesitated.
Hurry! Elle cried into her head.
“All right, all right, don’t get your knickers in a twist,” Fiona muttered, turning the knob, opening the door and sliding out of the room whereupon her ankle instantly twisted in the impossibly high heels Elle had on her feet. “Crikey, I see you never learned. How do you walk on these things?”
Just go, Elle retorted then added, But try not to break my ankle while you do it.
Fiona rolled her eyes but she went.
She was far more keen to get back to the ballroom than Elle was keen for her to do it.
Far, far more.
She made it just in time to hear the DJ announce, “And now it’s time for the father daughter, mother son dance. If the bride and her father and the groom and his mother could please take the dance floor…”
His invitation trailed off and Fiona moved toward the dance floor.
Then her human eyes saw Jason striding toward her, tall, handsome, his shoulders broad, his gait wide and confident, his muscled body looking very good in his tuxedo and her eyes filled with tears.
Not Elle’s tears, hers.
He looks so like Prentice when we were married, Fiona told Elle in her head.
I’ll bet he was beautiful, Elle replied.
You wouldn’t believe, Fiona told her.
Yes, Elle said softly, I would.
At Elle’s soft words, Fiona’s smile hit Elle’s lips.
It broadened when Jason arrived and he smiled down at her as he reached in and took her hand then lifted it and touched his lips to her knuckles before guiding her to the dance floor.
Her son was a gentleman and he was openly affectionate.
This did not surprise Fiona.
Then his arm closed around her as his hand brought hers up to press against his chest, his jaw dipped to press against the side of her head and the music started playing.
Held close to Jason, Fiona’s breath in Elle’s body hitched.
Jason heard it, his arm got tighter and his fingers around hers squeezed.
He tipped his head so his mouth was close to her ear.
“You okay, Elle?”
Fiona didn’t reply. She just nodded.
His fingers squeezed hers.
“I remember your wedding to Dad,” he whispered, moving her around the dance floor with strength, confidence and male grace. So like his father. Just like his Dad. “You danced with Dad to ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’.”
Fiona nodded even though she hadn’t been there for Prentice and Elle’s wedding. She hadn’t been back since she’d finally gone home.
Not until this special day.
But it seemed Elle had picked the perfect song.
“And Annie and Sally conspired so Sally could drop so many rose petals in the church that the pastor said they were still finding them a year later. Her flower girl basket was bigger than a breadbox and stuffed so full, she could barely carry it,” Jason went on, pulling her closer, swirling her around. “Do you remember?”
Fiona nodded again though she didn’t remember. Still, she thought it was sweet Sally and Annie did that. A little weird, but sweet.
“Sally had decreed that every heroine at the end of a fairytale deserves to walk on a bed of rose petals to meet her hero,” Jason continued before he chuckled and Fiona didn’t think it was weird anymore. Just sweet.
Oh, her Sally. She was sweeter.
“Annie and Sally definitely gave you yours,” he finished softly.
Fiona pulled in breath through her nose.
Then she turned her head slightly and whispered in her son’s ear, “And every handsome prince deserves a special gift too, when he finds his princess.”
“Still talking fairytales, Elle,” he muttered, his deep voice filled with humor. “I’m thirty-three, I know Sally grew out of them only about a month ago,” he teased. “But I’m also a man and I hate to break this to you, love, but I never grew into them.”
At that, Fiona felt it was time.
So she tilted her head back, Jason’s came up, she saw his devilish grin, her heart skipped and his eyes caught hers.
Then he came to a dead halt and his arm convulsed so tight she couldn’t breathe and his hand tightened in hers so hard she felt pain for the first time in over two decades.
He saw. He remembered.
She knew it.
He never forgot.
Never.
“Mum?” he whispered, his voice abrasive, thick, his beautiful eyes given to him by his father were shocked.
“Hello, love,” Fiona’s voice, not Elle’s, whispered back. “Congratulations, my darling.”